Snopestionary: 8 tips to vet fundraisers and protect your…

Here is how to make sure your money is going to a legitimate cause.

Amid the rise of AI slop and deepfakes, fraudsters have more tools than ever to trick a good samaritan into handing over money for an apparent good cause. Snopes has covered online scams for years: We have warned people away from illegitimate giveaways, a fake premium version of WhatsApp and phishing attempts. We have also debunked the authenticity of several viral GoFundMe pages, including a hoax page for a fake Powerball loser.  However, crowdfunding scams — as well as real people asking for help — are prominent due to global crises like those in Ukraine and Gaza and it is impossible for Snopes to cover every single one.

  "Fraudsters, they're opportunistic criminals," Mason Wilder, a research director of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, said in a phone call. "They don't let a good crisis go to waste."  Fraudsters often impersonate legitimate charities or real people in desperate circumstances. One of the simplest ways to check for impersonation is by doing a reverse image search of any pictures attached to a fundraiser, particularly of people.

If the photo shows up in other, older fundraisers then that is a significant red flag.  "Scammers are lazy," Wilder said. "They're just going to grab photos that exist or that they see on other people's pages and try to pass it off as their own."  Wilder recommended the reverse image search engines TinEye, Yandex and Google Images, which we also reference in our explainer on how to perform a reverse image search.

Generative artificial intelligence has increasingly become more realistic and difficult to spot. According to Wilder, some scammers even use live AI tools to make someone sound and look completely different. At Snopes, we frequently use AI-detection tools like ZeroGPT and Hive Moderation, but they are not foolproof.  There are a few indicators you can still look for, especially in content generated by less-sophisticated AI tools.

In images, check for distorted hands and facial features, inconsistent lighting, exaggerated facial expressions and illegible text. In videos, listen for monotone voices without a natural rhythm, distortions and unnatural movement.  Sometimes, organizations get created and registered as actual charities, but they "only exist to capitalize on some recent theme or disaster," Wilder said. Charity rating and legitimacy tools such as Charity Navigator, GuideStar and CharityWatch can provide insight into whether an organization is transparent about how donations are used and how much money actually goes to the cause in question.  Looking for an organization's news releases or reports from reputable news media outlets can also help to determine whether a charity has actually worked to benefit a cause.  "If there's no presence on the internet other than a basic webpage, that might be a bit of a red flag," Wilder said.  Scammers often use fraudulent web addresses to steal sensitive information.

Before clicking on a URL, try right-clicking, copying the full link and then pasting it into a tool that checks for malicious URLs. Bhupendra Acharya, a computer science professor at the University of Louisiana who researches cybercrime and fraudulent crowdfunding campaigns, recommended VirusTotal. Other detection tools include NordVPN's and Bitdefender's link checkers.  Potential donors should also consider what platform the fundraiser uses.

While smaller organizations and mutual aid groups may legitimately use crowdfunding platforms or mobile payment services like Venmo to raise money, if a fundraising campaign is supposedly for a major, established charity but is hosted on a third-party platform, that could be a clue that there is a fraudster behind the campaign, Wilder and Acharya said.  Some platforms also have various protections for your money, which donors can look for before sending anything.

GoFundMe, for example, has a "giving guarantee," where the company promises a full refund for up to a year if a donor believes something is not right. (A spokesperson for GoFundMe, Leigh Lehman, said in a phone call that misuse on the platform is rare and GoFundMe has a "robust safety process" involving verification of personal and banking information.)  Experts recommended taking the time to read the story's details, including the history of the fundraiser, whether the recipient has shared updates and how the funds are being used.  "Fraudsters are always hasty.

They want to make a lot of content creation, and they may not necessarily post all the relevant information," Acharya said by phone.  Some crowdfunding platforms, such as GoFundMe, have contact buttons for the organizer. Lehman recommended contacting the organizer for more information if there are insufficient details in the original call to action.  Acharya's research found that fraudsters often make multiple social media profiles to help boost one scam campaign and to create false credibility because victims, he said, are more likely to believe a campaign is legitimate if lots of people share it.

If the accounts sharing the story do not seem to follow the rules in tip No. 5, they may be bots or fake accounts.  Acharya said you can also sometimes tell if a social media account is not legitimate by looking at the profile's interests. People usually have a limited number of interests and share posts from a certain perspective, he said. For example, if the account has shared posts from dozens of different sports, that may indicate that something is off.  Fundraisers for individuals shared by people who you personally know — particularly those who explain their relationship to the person fundraising — are more likely to be legitimate, both Acharya and Lehman said.  Wilder recommended using credit cards over debit cards because, he said, they have better fraud protections for customers than debit cards or peer-to-peer payment platforms.  "If you use Venmo, that money is gone.

You're going to have to prove that it was fraud to get money back. If you use a credit card, you've got a billing cycle. They can just kind of freeze it," Wilder said.  (Payment apps often acknowledge that risk. Snopes contacted Venmo for a response and will update this story if we hear back.)  While these tips can help separate fact from fraud, there is no single, concrete way to determine the legitimacy of many crowdfunding campaigns.

In some situations, legitimate fundraisers can also appear to be spam or scams — and skilled fraudsters often use slick designs and professional layouts to add credibility, Acharya said.  Still, all of the experts Snopes spoke to emphasized that they did not want to warn people away from donating in general and that legitimate causes and communities still need support. For many people, Wilder pointed out, the risk of being scammed is worth it if they are helping others.  "People who are in destitute situations because they're from Gaza and their whole life has been destroyed, they're not necessarily going to be able to demonstrate a long history of consistent habits as they're trying to plea for any assistance while dying of starvation," Wilder said, in reference to expert advice on checking a person's social media page.

"In some cases, you're going to have to make a bit of a leap of faith."

Summary

This report covers the latest developments in artificial intelligence. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

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