The extraordinary story of Gemma Sheridan, a woman from Liverpool saved by Google Earth after seven years stranded on a desert island, has whipped up a storm among social media users – despite being quite spectacularly fake.

Posted on the website News-Hound.org, it claimed Ms Sheridan and two friends had embarked on a voyage to Hawaii when they met bad weather, damaging the boat and knocking her unconscious.

According to the tale, she awoke to find herself on the beach of a remote island. Ms Sheridan then apparently spent seven years carving out a difficult survival before an SOS sign she made was spotted on Google Earth satellite images by “some kid from Minnesota”, at which point she was saved.

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The article has been shared widely on Twitter – at times accompanied by “#truestory”, and with various messages along the lines of this from one user: “Thank you technology.”

Aside from the fairly incredible details involved in the story, the conspiracy theory and rumour-debunking website Waffles at Noon has pointed out a wide range of issues that show it is quite clearly a hoax.

Firstly, the so-called Google Earth picture of the “island” and its SOS message actually comes from a 2010 Amnesty International report on violence in Kyrgyzstan - the uncropped image shows buildings in the background.

The website News-Hound.org itself has, according to Waffles at Noon, a history of posting outlandish stories – and has put up articles which appear to pre-date the site’s own registration earlier this year.

Finally, the details of “Ms Sheridan’s” survival are not only fake but they are plagiarised – with huge chunks taken from a report into a Pacific island survival exercise undertaken by the explorer Ed Stafford.

There are some amazing true stories out there about survival over long periods at sea – sadly, this wasn’t one of them.