Help us build solutions to reduce proliferation of fake content on #WhatsApp Please forward suspicious posts to +91… https://t.co/zLfl1le7J2 — Ponnurangam Kumaraguru “PK” (@ponguru) 1532063877000

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NEW DELHI: Seeking to scotch rumours and identify fake news on social media platform WhatsApp , a team of experts at a city-based institution is working on developing an application that may be able to tell you whether a message is fake or not.Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, associate professor of computer science at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, (IIIT-D) is heading the team which is developing the app that seeks to determine the authenticity of a message circulated on this platform.Rumours on WhatsApp have sparked off a spate of incidents involving mob fury, including one where five men were lynched on the suspicion of being child-lifters in Maharashtra's Rainpada village. Recently, a man was beaten to death and three others were injured in Karnataka after a mob attacked them on similar suspicions.The professor feels that the application will be a useful tool in the current scenario where a number of such incidents have been reported in which people were killed in violence, triggered on the basis of rumours circulated on WhatsApp."We are collecting a large number of data and have asked people to forward us messages on the number 9354325700. These messages will be analysed and accordingly, we will develop a model for putting a wrapper on such messages," he added.For example, if a message is received, there will be colour codes that will indicate the authenticity.A green might indicate that it is a legitimate content, yellow colour might indicate that the system is not able to decode it while red might indicate that it is definitely fake content , he said."Through the messages received, we will study the common factors in such messages. The commonality might be an image, a URL or some words. If it is a forwarded message, it is a high probability that it is a fake message," said the professor.He said the app is likely to be ready in a couple of months.