Beware, Government is NOT giving away free laptops

Claim: URGENT, Government giving FREE laptop💻 to all the students of india. Register your name on Gov-Laptops Site to get FREE laptop now. To check eligibility visit 👉 https://bit.ly/3RApR0r

Fact Check:

It is a false claim. However this message is circulating fast on Whatsapp and is becoming viral. On checking we found that the link in the message is going to a website and definetely not a government site. Further, there is no such official announcement from the governement about the free laptops to all students.

According to the claim that's circulating - government is offering free laptops to eligible students from India. There is a 'bitly' link given asking the students to click on it to register and check their eligibility.

When you click on the bitly link, it redirects us to a blogspot site and not a government site.

We landed on the below mentioned website.

https://indiaedulaaptops.blogspot.com/

This is not a government site. Any government related information is posted on offical site that ends with gov.in

However, to mislead the students further the website has an interactive image that asks the students to put in their name and qualification. And when you enter the details, it asks the students to share this link to five other people on whatsapp, in order to go to the government site.

This explains why the message is becoming so viral on Whatsapp.

This is a blogspot site is encouraging people to share their name and details with a promise of leading them to the government site where they can register for free laptop. In order to do that they also are asking the visitors to share the message to five others on Whatsapp.

To look authentic, the image is designed to look like a social media post with misleading comments from inactive facebook accounts to say they got the computers. Further the number of comments, likes and shares are shown to be quickly changing into higher numbers while we are on the site. This is to give an appearance of how popular the site is.

We have further checked with government sources, and PIB Fact Check has posted a message saying there is no such announcement and it is disinformation.

Here's the link to PIB's Twitter Message

"A text message with a website link is circulating on social media which claims that @EduMinOfIndia is offering 500.000 free laptops to all students. The circulated link is fake.The government is not running any such scheme

Conclusion – This is not the first time that such disinformation is being circulated. One of the first indications that this is a disinformation is that it is not posted on the official government site. Further investigation proved that it is completely misleading.