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Correction: Florida woman did not marry her grandfather
That story that you read and shared about a woman finding out that her husband was her grandfather. There’s an update: It’s fake.
That story you read and shared about a woman finding out that her husband was her grandfather - there’s an update. It’s fake.
Last Friday, a Florida-based news website published a story claiming a 24-year-old woman in the US received a “terrible shock” after she discovered that her 68-year-old husband was her grandfather.
Many news websites across the world, especially in the US and the UK, aggregated the story. Indian news agencies picked up the story from foreign media, following which, news outlets that subscribe to them followed suit.
Hindustan Times did so too on Monday by publishing the story under the headline “US woman discovers husband is her grandfather”.
Now, with more details emerging about the ”news” website Florida Sun Post - the original “news source” to which the story was credited to - it is clear the story was a fake.
And the news website appears to be fake too, according to reports.
The Twitter handle @_FloridaMan was the first to state that the news websites had made a mistake.
Elena Cresci, a community coordinator for news with The Guardian, was among the first journalists to tweet about the fake report.
In a series of tweets, she said the Florida Sun Post was just days old and had no social media presence.
According to Cresci, the website was created on September 29, 2016, just a day before the article was published.
According to a report in Mashable, there were many clues on the website that show it is not trustworthy.
The article said the website’s privacy section was a copy-paste job and all other stories on the website were blocked by a paywall. When a Mashable correspondent reached out to the news website through its contact page, Google alerted him to say the e-mail ID looked suspicious.