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  • 2022-12-16 (xsd:date)
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  • Facebook posts claiming to be searching for birth parents are fake (en)
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  • A Facebook user is searching for their birth mother or father. False. The image used in the post is taken from a blog post on childhood toys published in 2021, and has been used by multiple different users claiming to be from multiple different places. A number of posts being shared to local Facebook groups from users claiming to be searching for their birth parents are fake. One of the posts reads: Hello my name is Kane Stewart. I was born here in #Leyland, June 17 1973 looking for my birth mother or father. Mother's name is Cathy M Evans and she was only 16 at time of my birth. That's all info I have. Please help me reunite with my family by #SHARING. Full Fact has spotted a number of similar posts using the same black and white image of a child, claiming to be searching for a woman called Cathy M Evans, but with the name of the person looking for their parents and the location changed. A reverse image search of the picture leads to a blog post published by the design studio Pd-m in November 2021 titled Toys & Tech we loved as children. The image appears to be a childhood photo shared by Richard Hall, managing director at Pd-m. We’ve contacted Mr Hall about the posts and will update this article if he responds. None of the Facebook posts we’ve identified sharing this plea, with this image attached, were posted by Mr Hall, and so they can be presumed to be fake. We’ve written about similar hoaxes shared across local Facebook groups before, including posts about lost dogs, missing children and stolen newborns, as part of our work fact checking online misinformation. Image courtesy of Brett Jordan This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image used in the post is taken from a blog post on childhood toys published in 2021, and is not of the post’s author. (en)
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