A link to the website “Youth Empowerment & Development Organization (YEDO)” is being widely shared on Facebook and WhatsApp in Kenya.
One Facebook message posting the link reads: “Apply For The Youth Empowerment Fund Provided By The Government. Hurry Up, It takes few seconds to apply. Dont miss this opportunity.”
The link has been shared many times on public Facebook group pages with over 120,000 users, as seen here and here.
Interested candidates are invited to answer a few questions with personal details and amount needed.
But is the website giving funds legit? We checked.
Engagement bait scam
The grammatical errors in the posts advertising the site, and the site itself, are signs that you are dealing with online scammers.
After filling in the application form with your personal details, the website instructs you to share the post to 10 WhatsApp groups in order to receive a code for cash withdrawal.
This shows it is an engagement bait scam, where people are asked to interact by commenting or sharing with their friends and contact list. The more you interact with a post, the greater its reach.
Africa Check has previously investigated similar click-bait and phishing scams, here and here.
To help protect yourself against online scams, read our guide to Facebook scams and how to spot them.
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
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Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
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