A dubious months-old online post “raffling off” housing units for free, published by a spurious National Housing Authority website (nha-gov-ph.ml), is currently making rounds on social media.
Facebook page Sen. manny pacquiao libreng pabahay pilipinas had shared on April 8 and 16 the online post, which bore the title, “LIBRENG PABAHAY 2018 (para sa ika 2 taong paga Upo nang Pangulong Duterte) [FREE HOUSING 2018 (for the second year of President Duterte’s term)].” The earlier post was shared 896 times while the April 16 post by 444 people.
Its thumbnail, showing a two-storey townhouse and what appears to be a dining area and bedroom, was actually grabbed from a property posting on OLX.ph by a Noronisa Sangcopan for a P1.3 million Cebu City townhouse.
When clicked, nha-gov-ph.ml also leads to an unsecure web page instructing viewers to “like” the Facebook page Philippines viral news and share the link to the page, which was to serve as their “raffle” entry. There is also an option to register directly via a link, which when clicked, leads to an expired page.
The state-run NHA’s legitimate web address is nha.gov.ph. The creation date of the fake Housing page – nha-gov-ph.ml – could not be detected by domain history tracking tools.
Possibly reaching over 54,000 people from the Pacquiao page alone, new engagements to the story was detected by Facebook a few days after Sen. Manny Pacquiao won over Lucas Matthysse in a boxing match in Kuala Lumpur.
(Guided by the code of principles of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, VERA Files tracks the false claims, flip-flops, misleading statements of public officials and figures, and debunks them with factual evidence. Find out more about this initiative and our methodology.)
