Trust Tools

As the volume of information on the Internet increases, so does the volume of misinformation. It is almost impossible to check all the information you read every day. Even media companies find it difficult to correctly classify and evaluate all the information coming in from the various social media channels.

In the meantime, political groups, fringe actors, and hostile foreign states have made a science out of passing disinformation intentionally to further their political ends. Normal users are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish genuine news from manipulated news.

The good news is that various developers have identified this shortcoming and are providing extensions for popular web browsers to help distinguish between fake and genuine information. Many of these tools are based on artificial intelligence techniques, but some include support for manual checks or database comparisons for cases where artificial intelligence is not yet up to the task of fully automated checking.

Fake information also affects product reviews, where a company's aim is to sell more of its own items or discredit competitors' products. Browser extensions can scan product reviews, especially on large platforms like Amazon, and alert you to false information.

The currently available browser extensions focus on different areas that serve as the distribution channels for fake news (see the box entitled "Techniques"). Some of the add-ons are exclusively designed for use on the major social networks. Others focus on checking YouTube videos. Others check images published on the Internet, making it easier to expose images that have been altered or misrepresented.

If you really want to cover all the bases, you might need to install several of these browser extensions. It is important to note that some of these extensions are only available for Chrome and its derivatives. Some extensions will also run on Mozilla Firefox, but if you need to access the full range of these services, it is a good idea to keep a Chrome-based browser on hand.

When using the extensions discussed here, you should pay attention to privacy. Some of these extensions require you to log in with a Google account, while others want Twitter and Facebook accounts. Because some of these extension providers do not go into detail about what data they use for what purposes or whether they aggregate data to generated profiles, you might want to avoid such extensions if you're concerned about privacy.

RevEye and TinEye

RevEye [1], a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, makes it easier to check images with the help of several search engines. After installation, activate the image search by right-clicking on the image you wish to check and select the Reverse image search entry from the context menu that opens. You then need to click on one of the four image search engines: Google, Bing, Yandex, or TinEye.

TinEye [2] is an engine that specializes in image searches and does not store any data. The fact that TinEye doesn't store user data makes it especially suitable for security-conscious users. (TinEye is also available as an extension for Firefox and Chrome.)

Click on the All search engines option in TinEye to open four tabs in the browser that display the results from all four search engines. In testing, TinEye's results were clearly superior to those of the other engines. For example, Bing displayed a hodgepodge of similar images in the test, but hardly any exact matches. In addition, Bing also lacked most of the relevant data for the individual images. The results for Yandex and Google were also less meaningful than the TinEye results. TinEye, on the other hand, listed the virtually identical images it found, including the metadata, and also provided a comparison of the matches with the original (Figure 1).

Figure 1: TinEye's image search supports quick matching of similar images.

To compare the matches with the subject of the search, move the mouse pointer to one of the listed images and then click on the Compare link. The image will then appear in a separate window. To view the images in comparison, click on Image match or Your image.

TinEye also displays the publication date to the right of each image in a list, as well as the origin URL and the image size. This summary of statistics in list form makes it easy to determine whether an image has actually been created recently – or whether the image has been manipulated by subsequent retouching. TinEye also lets you track down copyright infringements on images.

The Factual

The Factual [5] is available as a browser add-on for Chrome and its derivatives and can be displayed using the toolbar after installation. The Factual portal, which belongs to the California-based CivikOwl organization and provides the browser add-on of the same name, also relies on a mixture of artificial intelligence and manual checking for its text analysis; it also references databases.

The Factual bills itself as the "world's largest news ratings engine." The project claims to have analyzed 10 million news stories from 50,000 journalists and 2,000 news sources to develop a grading system that evaluates a news story based on four factors:

• Diversity and extent of sources
• Author's tone (neutral vs. opinionated language)
• Author's expertise on topic
• Site's historical reputation

The browser extension opens a small window when launched. Colored tiles appear after completing the analysis, with the tiles providing visual information on the status of the article that was checked. The four tiles available in the basic setting evaluate the general quality of the investigated medium, the expertise of the article's author, the quality of the sources used, and the objectivity of the article. Using an overall quota, the extension also presents the quality of all factors as an absolute percentage value and identifies the political orientation of the medium (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Factual incorporates a wide variety of criteria into its analysis.

The Show details link displayed at the bottom of the window lets you view more detailed information about the reviewed article. You will then also see the number of sources and links mentioned. The color spectrum of the individual evaluation criteria, ranging from green to red, helps you see at a glance how to rate the article (Figure 3).

Figure 3: A color-coded, detailed display breaks down the individual evaluation criteria.

TrustedNews

TrustedNews [6], another browser extension, uses artificial intelligence to analyze media articles on English-language websites. The tool features an Objectivity category that checks an article's objectivity and highlights the more objective sentences in yellow. In addition, it gives a value for a news story's objectivity on a scale of one to five (Figure 4). The lower this value, the more subjective the report. TrustedNews also determines an additional value for the medium based on multiple criteria. For example, users can press a radio button to say whether they feel an article is objective or subjective in terms of its content.

Figure 4: TrustedNews rates the objectivity of articles.

InVID

The InVID toolkit, originally developed with financial support from the EU, claims to be a source checking Swiss army knife for journalists and political activists [7]. InVID, which is provided under a free MIT license, bills itself as "… a platform providing services to detect, authenticate, and check the reliability and accuracy of newsworthy video files and video content spread via social media." You can use InVID as a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and their derivatives. The tool analyzes images and video files, from which it also extracts the metadata if desired.

For videos found on Twitter and YouTube, InVID displays the licenses associated with the video. For image searches, the app also breaks down YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter videos, and even MP4 files, into their individual keyframes, so that search engines such as TinEye can check the authenticity of the data.

After installation, you will find a button for InVID in the toolbar. Clicking on the button opens a small menu where you can select the desired function. Depending on the browser, the menus will use different designs. Use the Open Toolbox option to open the main menu in Chrome, or use Open InVID in Firefox (Figure 5).

Figure 5: The InVID toolkit's interface differs depending on the browser. Firefox is on the left, and Chrome is on the right.

To analyze a YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter video, choose the Analysis button in the selection menu. In the subsequent Video contextual verification window, enter the URL of the video you want to verify, and then click Submit. After a short while, the browser will display the retrieved data in a table. The report includes the title of the movie and a summary of its contents, followed by some important statistics like the number of views, the duration, and the time of the upload. The steps are slightly different but similar in Chrome and its derivatives.

WeVerify

WeVerify, an open source platform, provides the following methods and tools to address online disinformation [8]:

• Cross-modal disinformation detection and content verification tools
• Blockchain-based database of "known fakes"
• An open source content verification browser plugin
• A collaborative cross-media verification workbench
• Citizen-oriented verification chatbot
• Tools for sourcing and tracking disinformation flows

WeVerify offers forensic analysis of images (Figure 6). In Chrome-based browsers, click on Images and then select the Forensics option. Type the URL of the image you wish to check. WeVerify checks the image for inconsistencies and presents the results with links to explanations. In the lower third of the window, you will find metadata that will help you draw conclusions about fakes.

Figure 6: The WeVerify toolkit also performs forensic analysis on images.

WeVerify also includes an option that lets you magnify an image published on the Internet, because sometimes magnifying the image can be enough to expose a fake.

YouTube Metadata

The free YouTube Metadata [9] online service extracts metadata from YouTube videos and displays the results in a web browser. Enter the video's cached URL in the field provided on the main page, and then click Submit. After a short time, the analysis results appear below the input line. The results contain various statistics about the analyzed video to let you determine the upload time, which will help you determine the age of the clip.

ReviewMeta

ReviewMeta, a browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome, helps detect fake reviews on Amazon's websites [10]. After accessing an Amazon product web page, click on the ReviewMeta icon in a new tab to open the ReviewMeta website. ReviewMeta automatically searches the reviews for the product based on various criteria.

Some of the criteria look at the quality of the individual reviews. ReviewMeta also examines linguistic aspects of the reviews, as well as the classification of the commentators as verified or unverified buyers on Amazon. To perform these tasks, ReviewMeta accesses databases and lists the results on the website with color highlighting. You can see at a glance whether negative or positive aspects predominate. ReviewMeta generates a new rating index based on the trusted ratings. If there are numerous dubious comments about a product on the page, the portal hides them. You only see the new rating index and the number of existing trusted ratings (Figure 7). You will find the evaluation criteria listed at the top of the web page described in detail below, sometimes with illustrations.

Figure 7: ReviewMeta searches reviews for fakes.

Conclusions

The tools discussed in this article can help you detect disinformation on the Internet. Some of these extensions evaluate news content, while others help detect fake images and videos. There's even a tool for weeding out fake reviews on Amazon. Because analysis techniques vary depending on the source medium, it is always good idea to use several tools to separate the geniune content from the fake.