Infodemic: Storm of unsubstantiated information about COVID-19

After fake news and disinformation, another concept came along: infodemic. It is a compound word and comes from the words information and epidemic. It means the excessive flow of information, which is one of the global problems currently affecting the planet, and it is none other than COVID-19, and it is such a large and uncontrollable flow of disinformation.

We were the first to enter the battle looking for the source of fake news against the coronavirus with the #AudaxUnderCovid19 campaign and with everyone's help we managed to collect a lot of data and in the next few days we will post a relevant platform with the data.

The data we can give so far is that for the whole of March we have collected, using special software we designed, almost 3 million tweets worldwide of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and about 100,000 Greek tweets! The infodemic's field of action is twitter with accounts created, most of them, in the first half of February. A very big problem within twitter is created by shots of unknown origin and linking old incidents as facts to the current situation.

The situation is getting out of control not only on Twitter but also on the web. We have detected more than 5,000 new sites with coronavirus domain (site name), most of which in addition to infodemic sites are spreading malware.

The infodemic will continue, as long as the coronavirus also gains ground. Difficult to deal with as infodemic spreads faster than the virus itself certainly with far fewer victims! Don't forget how some people read in fake news how if they finally drink chloroquine they will not catch the virus and thus die a tragic death.

The answers are more difficult than ever. We will continue with thorough research and verification of every word. We ask you in these difficult times to simply wait. Wait before you go public with anything you have no confirmation of.

Send us any news, photo or post related to COVID-19 and we will check its credibility in the special email we have created, covid19@audax.gr or by inbox on our Facebook page, @AudaxCyber.