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Surfshark releases a free fake news warning feature to spot propaganda
March 2022 by Marc Jacob
Seeking to stop intensifying propagandist movements, Lithuania-based cybersecurity company Surfshark released a free feature on its browser extensions (Chrome and Firefox) to help anyone avoid false information on the internet. The Fake news warning (FNW) detects and highlights website links from various media and other websites that are known to spread fake news and misinformation.
“The 21st century has shown that information might be sharper than the sword. It’s evident that today’s disinformation campaigns aim to distract, confuse, manipulate, and sow division, discord, and uncertainty in the community. Keeping in mind the intensifying propaganda, we decided to release a feature that would allow people to identify fake news websites easily,” explains Vytautas Kaziukonis, CEO of Surfshark.
The feature detects specific URLs from a list of websites and highlights them with a YYY symbol. To highlight fake news sites, users need to download the Surfshark extension on Chrome or Firefox. They do not need an account or a Surfshark subscription to use this feature as it is free for everyone.
Once installed, the extension will activate the FNW feature by default. If people are Surfshark’s users already, they can toggle this feature on or off under the “VPN settings” in their extension.
The list of untrustworthy websites was taken from propornot.com and reviewed by Surfshark security experts. The company is now talking with more security institutions worldwide to monitor and update this list, and iterations of it will roll out after the initial release.
The company’s Security officer Aleksandr Valentij also advised using other fact-checking resources.
