Students surf the Internet during a media lesson at their school.
Many people share news articles online. They do not always read them first, though. Some of these articles are fake. If you spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter, you might have shared fake news too.

A team of French and American computer scientists studied fake news. They found that almost 3 out of 5 links shared on sites like Facebook and Twitter have never been clicked. People do not really read the article. They only read the title. Then they share it. That is how fake news spreads.

You can spot fake news if you look closely. That way you will not spread it to others.

Is It A Trustworthy Website?

ABC News is a television network. Its website is abcnews.go.com. There is another ABC News site. It is at abcnews.com.co. This one is fake. The use of ".co" at the end is an important difference. It lets you know the news is not real.

Also, look for the "contact us" page. Some fake news sites do not have that. Real news sites usually have phone numbers and street addresses.

Check Out The Reporter

An article on the fake ABC News says it was written by someone named "Dr. Jimmy Rustling." The site says he has won 14 Peabody awards. It says he has also won some Pulitzer Prizes.

Peabody awards and Pulitzer Prizes are like the gold medals of journalism. They are not easy to win. It is strange that he has so many. He is probably not a real person.

Read The Article Closely

Many fake articles have made-up quotes. One fake article has a false sentence from the creator of Snopes. Snopes is a website trying to stop fake news.

The Snopes creator is quoted as saying he thinks the article is good. This is strange because the article also says Snopes is usually wrong. This does not make sense. Why would the Snopes creator say something bad about his own website? This is a clue. The quote is probably fake. The story is fake as well.

Look At The Sources

Sometimes fake articles are started with nothing but a Twitter post. Few real news stories begin with a single tweet. Tweets are easy to make up. It can be hard to know if they are true. Reporters know that. Most real articles have plenty of other sources of information, just in case.

Use search engines to double-check

A Google search often will tell you if a site is no good. Snopes made a guide to fake news sites. There are also websites that will check articles.

If it seems too crazy to be true, it probably is. We should all read before sharing.

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