Fake News and Finding Reliable Sources: Tools

Sometimes also referred to as the Wayback Machine, Internet Archive is a digital archive. Internet Archive for a couple of decades has been taking snapshots of websites and archiving them. 

The YouTube data viewer, affiliated with Amnesty International, helps to extract hidden data about the nature of the video you're viewing. 

The VLC Media Player, available for most platforms, allows you to slow down video and take snapshots. This is useful when trying to determine the authenticity of a video. Slowing the video down allows you to see details you might otherwise miss, and when you take a snapshot, you can run the image through a reverse image tool to see if it's correctly labeled. 

TwitterAudit

Did you know that you can purchase Twitter followers? This product helps you determine how many followers are legit.  

Viewdns provides extensive DNS and domain information, including Reverse Whois, IP history, a Chinese firewall test, and more. 

You can search domains, which are the base part of the URL, like www.microsoft.com. who.is provides basic information about that domain, who owns it, and sometimes their address. Particularly important is that it'll report when the domain was registered. Recently registered sites don't have a history to check for authority. 

X has an Advanced Search. Type your search in the search box at the top of X, then click on Search Filters and Advanced Search. 

Why do a reverse image search:

• To make sure you're not using a stolen image.
• To make sure someone hasn't stolen one of your images.
• To double check what someone looks like before you meet them. 
• To make sure they are associated with who they claim to be associated with. 
• To do a reverse image search on yourself to make sure your image isn't being used in a way you aren't aware of. 
• To avoid being 'catfished', that is having someone pretend to be someone else online. 

There are two ways to do a reverse Google image search:

• You can search for an image on Google by right-clicking it and choosing "search Google for image." This will allow you to find out how and where the image has been used, which can be useful in determining whether the image is really what it's labeled as.  
• You can go to https://reverse.photos/  and upload your images to search and find out if something similar is out there.

Another reverse image search is RevEye. It's a Chrome Add-on. 

Yet another good reverse image search is TinEye.