We’ve investigated hundreds of misleading stories during the pandemic. It’s given us an idea about who is behind misinformation – and what motivates them. Here are seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods:<\/p>\n You’d hope no-one was fooled by a WhatsApp voice note claiming the government was cooking a giant lasagne in Wembley stadium to feed Londoners. But some people didn’t get the joke.<\/p>\n To take a slightly more serious example, a prankster created a screenshot of a fake government text that claimed the recipient had been fined for leaving the house too many times. He thought it would be funny to scare people breaking lockdown rules.<\/p>\n After encouraging his followers to share it on Instagram, it found its way to local Facebook groups, where it was posted by worried residents, some of whom took it seriously.<\/p>\n “I don’t really want to cause panic,” says the prankster, who wouldn’t give us his real name. “But if they believe a screenshot on social media, they really need to sort of re-evaluate the way they consume information on the internet.”<\/p>\n Other fake texts claiming to be from the government or local councils have been generated by scammers looking to make money from the pandemic.<\/p>\n One such scam\u00a0investigated by fact-checking charity Full Fact<\/a>\u00a0in March claimed that the government was offering people relief payments and asked for bank details.<\/p>\n Photos of the scam text were shared on Facebook. Since it circulated by text message, it’s difficult to get to the bottom of who was behind them.<\/p>\n Scammers started using fake news about the virus to make money as early as February,\u00a0with emails suggesting people could “click for a coronavirus cure review” or suggesting they were entitled to a tax refund because of the outbreak.<\/a><\/p>\n Misinformation doesn’t just come from dark corners of the internet.<\/p>\n Last week President Donald Trump questioned whether exposing patients’ bodies to UV light or injecting bleach could help treat the coronavirus. He was speculating and took facts out of context.<\/p>\n He later claimed the comments were sarcastic. But that didn’t stop people from\u00a0phoning hotlines to ask about treating themselves with disinfectant.<\/a><\/p>\n It’s not just the US President. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman\u00a0promoted the idea that Covid-19 might have been brought to Wuhan by the US Army<\/a>. Conspiracy theories about the outbreak have been discussed in prime time on Russian state TV, and by pro-Kremlin Twitter accounts.<\/p>\n All the uncertainty about the virus has created a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n A false story of murky origins claiming the first volunteer to take part in a UK vaccine trial had died circulated in big anti-vaccination and conspiracy Facebook groups. It was fiction.<\/p>\n![\""Joker":](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/768\/cpsprodpb\/107C4\/production\/_112042576_f57faeef-994c-4e18-945f-d0dd51ca4561.png\")
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