A number of Facebook (FB) pages and groups are sharing links to a fraudulent website that poses as an online portal for the registration of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) educational assistance. The website is a scam.
From Sept. 18 to 20, an FB group made several posts sharing the supposed registration link for the DSWD’s cash aid to qualified students. The posts urged users to register to supposedly receive a notification from the DSWD. Some of the posts also claimed that the payout for the cash assistance has been extended to October this year.
This website is a scam that asks for personal information. DSWD has already said relevant information on their student aid will only be released on their official social media accounts.
“DSWD emphasizes that it has no affiliation with any other Facebook page/pages and that official information are transmitted only in the official accounts aforementioned, and in regional DSWD Facebook pages,” DSWD told VERA Files Fact Check in an Aug. 18 email.
The possible extension of the student cash assistance has also yet to be finalized. The DSWD is still reviewing a possible one-time extension of the cash aid program that ran for a six-week period.
These FB posts appeared ahead of the final payout of the educational cash assistance that happened on Sept. 24, which has aided half a million student beneficiaries since the program started in August.
The links lead to a fraudulent website called careerz.world, which has been posted on at least 57 FB groups and pages and has received over 97,600 interactions, according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
The link has was shared by several netizens on FB group 4p’s at DSWD Cash Assistance Help Group (created on May 22, 2020), collectively garnering over 7,900 reactions, 7,100 comments and 900 shares.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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