breaking news in breaking news situations or in crisis zones viral photos circulate quickly online but on social media it's common for fake photos to circulate either images that show something different from what it's supposed to be portraying or even photos that are manipulated the question is how can you know whether the photos you encounter are real or fake in this video i'm going to show you four useful tools to help you verify the images you encounter online let's start with this example this photo allegedly shows a little girl named malak who was supposedly killed by
an israeli airstrike in the gaza strip in 2021 we found this claim on several social networks and in numerous languages a good way to find out if the photo really shows what it's said to show is by doing a reverse image search my colleague rachel bake breaks down how it works first of all i would upload the image to a reverse image search tool like tinai there i can find out when the image was used for the first time and where an important side note it's worth trying out the reverse image search on other platforms
as well such as the russian search engine yandex or google usually different platforms offer different results regarding our example rachel found out the picture is not from gaza and it's also not current it actually shows a young girl from russia called sophie and she's alive and celebrating her sixth birthday according to photos her mother has uploaded on instagram [Music] so the reverse image search is a really useful tool nevertheless it's not always helpful as our next example shows sometimes the platforms don't have any matches for the photo you're looking for or sometimes you need a
second way to verify an image let's have a look at another example this photo was shared several times and also used by mass media it allegedly shows hordes of ukrainians fleeing from the russian invasion at the main stage in harkief at the beginning of march 2022 but many social media's users doubt the photo is real the reverse image search shows that the picture really was posted at the beginning of march but how can we be sure that the photo is real and current the first possible way to verify that is to check whether the photo
really shows the train station hard keef for that we can simply use a web-based mapping platform such as google maps the research shows that the photo really does show the train station harjit pasarjirsky you can recognize that by comparing the yellow building or the same display boards in both pictures okay so the location is correct but how can we confirm the photo was uploaded for the first time at the beginning of march let's take a closer look here you can see a person holding an umbrella like this one many others are wearing a hood so
it seems as if it rained on the day the photo was taken so now we have to find out whether it rained in haruki at the beginning of march or not we can verify that with a really cool tool using websites like wall from alpha you can find out what the weather was like on a certain day in a certain place we found out that on the 4th and 5th of march there was actually rainfall in harkeef [Music] exciting the internet has a treasure trove of resources and tools for verification there are also a set
of tools that can help you tell where the photos have been manipulated the one i show you today is called forensically so now let's take a closer look at this photo does the surfer really swim towards the waterfall i upload the photon forensically try several tools and in fact the forensic analysis shows disturbances and thus offers strong evidence that the image has been manipulated forensically makes changes to the image fire visible which is particularly evident here in the surface sail the server was therefore very likely inserted into the photo of the waterfall with photoshop or
another photo editing platform [Music] so now you know four basic tools for helping to spot manipulated or fake images the reverse image search online mapping services weather data and the quick forensic picture analysis have you recently come across possible fake images or videos then feel free to write to us at factchecking dw.com
