WEST Fifers are being warned to be on their guard after hundreds of people shared a hoax Facebook page about an injured dog apparently found in Dunfermline.

Full Fact, a charity of fact checkers and campaigners working to combat misinformation, has issued a warning after an influx of hundreds of fake posts in local Facebook community groups across the world.

There were over 600 shares of the post mentioning Dunfermline which said: "Hello. If anyone is looking for this sweet boy, found him lying on the side road in Dunfermline.

“He was hit by a car in a hit and run incident. I took him to the vet he is not chipped I know someone is looking for him.

“He definitely misses his family, I'll continue to take care of him in the meantime. Please bump this post to help me find his owner.”

Pictured with the post was a dog with stitches across an injury to its face.

An investigation by Full Fact identified at least 1,200 examples of such posts, with at least 115 local areas in the UK falling victim to this phenomenon.

They say some of the posts are also being edited after they have been initially posted to display financial offers specifically targeting those in the UK.

Full Fact began working with Meta, then known as Facebook, on the Third Party Fact Checking Programme in January 2019 as its first UK partner to identify, review and rate potentially false stories, images and videos on its platforms.

They say Facebook users clicking on links in edited hoax posts are often then taken to the real website of a legitimate company or organisation, but arrive there via an unconnected third party website and an affiliate link which earns a small fee.

Steve Nowottny, Editor at Full Fact, said: “The sheer scale of these posts is hard to fathom and we are conscious that the 1,200 or so we have identified is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

"These posts are all highly emotive and get shared widely because people understandably want to help those in need or warn their neighbours about threats.

“But that’s where the risk lies – the hoaxers have clearly identified the massive reach these posts can have and local Facebook groups across the world are now becoming overwhelmed with false information.

“Some of these hoaxes appear designed to terrify local communities, and sow needless fear and confusion. As a result, genuine warnings about dangers and genuine posts from people desperately appealing for help, such as those looking for missing loved ones or missing pets, are now at a much higher risk of being ignored.

“The impact and scale of these hoaxes and the edited posts they are often replaced by is extremely concerning, which is why we have written to Meta to raise the alarm about this issue.”

Copying and pasting some of the text from a post into a Facebook search will quickly reveal if there are multiple versions of the same post in existence.

Full Face have identified seven ways to spot if a Facebook post is a hoax.

They advise to check if comments are disabled – most people genuinely trying to find a lost family member or pet are seeking information, so would likely want to allow people to comment. (This isn’t a guarantee though — people may turn off comments for other reasons, for example if a missing person has been found, and some hoax posts keep the comments open.) Look to see if the caption has been copied and pasted. To check, highlight some of the text, and copy and paste it yourself into Facebook’s search function at the top of the page. If posts with identical or almost-identical text appear, even with different images, it’s likely a hoax.

Check to see if the image has been used elsewhere, if it is posted by a page, not a profile. Watch out for posts uploaded by someone with a newly-created page, rather than a regular profile account, particularly if they’ve not posted anything else.

Look to see if the image doesn’t look like it’s from the UK. Pictures used might illustrate rental home offers are often clearly from the US, and Full Fact has also seen obviously American police cars or petrol stations in posts supposedly about events in the UK.

Also, look to see if the language used sounds like it’s from the UK. For instance, any reference to a ‘silver alert’ in a UK Facebook group should trigger an alarm bell. Silver alerts are used in the US to notify the public about missing people.

Look out for a red pin or red siren emoji. As some Facebook groups dedicated to highlighting hoax posts have pointed out, hashtags and the emojis are often used in hoax posts.

And finally, if you think a post may have once been a hoax, check if it’s been edited. Clicking on the edit history using the three horizontal dots at the top right of the post will show you if the original content has been changed.