What are fakers?

Fakers (also called trolls on some boards, although not a term used in the traditional sense of "internet troll") are people who pretend to be someone else or make up a persona and pretend to be that character or pretend to have or be something they aren't. For some reason, a lot of people decide to pretend to either be multiples or a parent of multiples online.

For a list of some of the bigger hoaxes in the multiple birth world, please visit the Hoaxes page.
 

What do they do?

Most fakers make up lies about having multiples, posting about them on message boards and at websites.

Some fakers steal photos and pass them off as their own kids. Not all the stolen photos will be of children - some will be of houses, cars, rooms etc.

Some befriend real people for years, carrying on an elaborate fake friendship.

Some try and get people to send them gifts or donations for the children they pretend to have.

Some impersonate a real set or real parents of multiples, either by creating accounts and posting on message boards as them or emailing people pretending to be the real family.

Fakers exist in other online communities as well. You can find them anywhere, from medical support groups where people fake having illnesses (Munchausen by Internet) to military sites (many groups are dedicated to exposing people pretending to be military or pretending to have won military medals and honors) and "rate how hot I am" sites.

Recently, a woman in Canada was charged with fraud for pretending to have cancer and collecting gifts. She went so far as to shave off her hair. [Article] She was sentenced to a 15 month conditional sentence. [Article]

Some people have faked writing entire memoirs which are published as truth and turn out to be false, such as the James Frey controversy and the Margaret Jones memoir. See the NY Times article for info.
 

Why do they do it?

A myriad of reasons - bored teenagers who think it's fun, creative people that are playing fiction out for real, teens who feel they aren't welcome at parenting sites because they aren't parents, people who think their real self isn't interesting enough, people who like attention, people who want to get caught lying because it's funny when the board gets in an uproar, people who just want to do it because it's the internet and they can, people who have personality disorders and other mental issues - there are so many reasons why someone would fake.

The most serious would be people who are so wrapped up in it they almost (or do) believe it themselves.

Some people want money or free stuff and like conning people. We call these people "criminals."
 

Where do you find multiple birth fakers?

The likely places for multiples fakers are message boards about pregnancy, parenting, baby names and multiple births.

You may find fake multiples on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Google+, Livejournal, Blogger and other social networking sites.

In general you can find fakers everywhere - rating sites, journals, military sites, fandom sites, the real world ...
 

What should I do if I encounter a faker, or someone who might be faking?

My advice is to take every poster claiming multiples with a grain of salt unless they post a few pictures of the kids together and over time (if they are faking using stolen photos it'll get found out pretty quickly - the multiple birth community is fairly small, and there are mailing lists of board and list moderators who share information about suspected fakers, including the pictures they use).

Google the name they give you to see if there's any news articles - if it's quads or higher, there's a good chance there will be some. Check with other higher order multiple moms. There are private, pay groups (such as Triplet Connection and MOST) that verify their members. Google their username to see if it comes up in conversation anywhere. Many fakers like to fake being pregnant so they can claim that's why there are no articles about them. Many fakers also keep to triplets and twins, knowing they don't get the same news coverage.

If a person is posting and you suspect they might be faking, either ignore their posts or tell the board moderator who can investigate. Most boards don't want you to call out the people yourself; check the board rules to see if this is allowed or not. You may think a poster with quints is faking but it could turn out to be true. The best thing to do is alert the board owner/moderator and let them handle it and just ignore the poster.

You also might think about letting some other people know via private message, just so other people the faker is in touch with don't get duped further. On boards where the moderators just ban fakers and don't announce what's happened to the community at large, the faker may have the opportunity to continue faking by privately messaging those they talk with and spinning lies about why they are banned. They may continue to be in contact with board members they've met via email, PM, or instant messaging, so it may be wise to give them a private heads up about the situation.
 

This person has a Facebook, they have to be real, right?

Not necessarily.

While the advent of Facebook and other social networking sites has made faking a little harder, it's not impossible. Fakers who befriend people enough to give them their "real name" will often have a social networking profile associated with it. You may add them as a friend and see a fully functioning profile with photos, comments from friends etc. Fakers will often create more than one Facebook profile and use the other ones to "seed" the comment and wall sections of Facebook, so it appears they have real-life friends commenting, when in fact it's just the faker doing double duty.

So just because you see a Facebook profile doesn't necessarily mean the person is telling the truth.

Big deal, someone's faking, why does it matter? Just ignore them.

I bet the parents of Megan Meier wish that faking didn't have dire consequences, but it does. The truth of the internet is you NEVER know who you're really talking to. Anyone online can create a persona and live online as that person. A faker may be faking to someone who is in a precarious mental state, and the results of that can be tragic, as shown when adult (and mother) Lori Drew faked being a teenage boy named Josh, a situation which eventually caused Megan Meier to commit suicide. 

Many people DO ignore the fakers - after all, attention is what they are after and this is the best thing to do when you discover one. But if you're on a busy message board, chances are it isn't going to be ignored by everyone, especially if the faker has befriended many people. If you've been the one that's duped or you've lost money, it can be very hard to sit back and ignore them.

It may not be a big deal to those who can spot them easily, or have never had a faker lie to them or steal their photos or identity. Most eventually give themselves away - and sometimes they are good for a laugh because they suck at lying and the faking is very obvious and sometimes unintentionally hilarious.

I think it is fair to warn others on the board to avoid the person (in private message or email), especially if the person chatting with the faker seems to not have a clue about it and the faker has been around the board for awhile and has had the chance to make relationships with people. If you could prevent someone from having to take their family website down because people steal photos of their kids, or having to deal with someone who pretend to be them and opened an email account in their name, or prevent someone from sending gifts to someone who doesn't really exist, wouldn't you want to do it?

Recently, a woman and her husband were sentenced to prison for pretending to have sextuplets and duping people out of money.
 

Someone is trying to get me to send them things, what should I do?

Do not send donations, gifts, food, clothing or ANYTHING to someone online that you have not met in person to verify their story.

Even if someone provides a phone number and you talk to them, it still does not mean they are who they say they are. Unless you are willing to give your money up to someone who may not be telling the truth, don't donate anything.

When the Everson's faked having sextuplets, a friend who believed them set up a website for collecting donations. So even a legitimate looking site may be run by someone who is also being duped. A reporter visited their home and saw nothing to indicate she was faking - there was even a nursery set up in the home. If you choose to give money or gifts, know that they might not be going to who you think they are and you may never see that money or your item may never get to anyone who will have use for it.

If you have sent gifts or money to someone you later find out is faking, and you have information on who this person really is, you can inform their local authorities, as accepting gifts under false pretenses is a crime.

Many message boards have exchanges - people will sign up, get paired with a person and exchange anything from candy to Christmas ornaments. While it's a nice idea, go into it with the knowledge that although you may keep up your end of the bargain and send something, you may never get anything in return. The majority of exchanges work well, but be aware it doesn't work out for everyone.
 

I found a website and I think they stole photos!

If you know this for sure (the real multiple family website has the photos that were stolen on it etc), alert the real family that their photos were stolen, then email the person who made the fake website and tell them that you informed the family their photos were stolen. That is usually enough to get the fakers to shut the site down. If they don't take the photos down, you can contact the web host - it is against the Terms of Agreement of almost every web host (as well as social networking sites and blogs) for someone to use photos that do not belong to them without permission of the photo owner. In some cases the web host will suspend the site to investigate. I've have seen quite a few websites shut down by various web hosts when they are informed the member stole the photos they are using, especially if the photos are of children.
 

Someone stole my pictures, what do I do?

If they are posting on a message board, report them to the board owner and moderators and let everyone on the board know they stole the pics. This usually results in the faker not coming back and the admin banning them from the site. Ask the admin if you can have the person's IP address - this will allow you to trace them back to their Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are many free services online to do a whois search which will tell you where the person is from and how to contact the abuse report section of the ISP.

If they have created a website or photo account, ask them to remove the photos (if they have contact information), and also report them to the site operators. Photobucket, Picasa, babiesonline, MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, Livejourna, Tumblr etc all have contact email. Tell them the pictures are being used without permission.

If you have their IP address and they have not removed photos, trace the IP back to their service provider (search Google for "free IP tracing" and you can find free sites that will do this). You can contact the ISP and tell them the IP address and what their customer is doing. Administrators of message boards and websites can request that a block be put on that person's account so they can't access certain websites (in case they find a way around being banned at a message board).

Photos are NOT in the public domain (free to use) unless the person who took them says "these are in the public domain" or it is 75 years after your death. So YOU hold the rights to your photos, and companies that offer web services (photo sharing, websites etc) should honour that right.

If you post pictures up on your website, you can try a few things to protect them.

• Place them on a page that is not linked on your website and only give the address to people you know. (This may not prevent Google or other search engines from accessing it and index it unless you include a robots.txt file that tells the search engine crawlers not to index it.))
• Password protect the page so that only people with the password can view it. Only give the password to those you trust and ask them not to pass it along. Some webhosts allow the use of htaccess, which can password protect an entire folder on your domain. You can control who you give access to with specific usernames and passwords. Dreamhost has this feature.
• Put a statistics counter like Google Analytics on your website, even if it's protected, so you can see who is accessing your site and from where.
• If you post photos to Facebook or other social networking sites, make them visible only to a select Friend group that you know and trust - do NOT make them public, and do not make them available to people you only know online. Facebook allows you to create friend lists and hide your pictures and posts from people if you wish.
• Turn off GPS on your phone if you use your phone to upload photos. If someone downloads your photo the exif data in your photo can show someone the exact place you took the photo - including your own home.
• Tell your friends and family and anyone you send pictures to that they can't send them to others without permission from you.
• Watermark your photos. This can be done in most graphics programs like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop - it does diminish the quality of the photos (a transparent image or text is placed over the picture). Fakers won't be able to use it if your username is transparently over the photo where it can't be cropped out.
• Make sure your camera EXIF data is set with your name and copyright, if your camera has this feature. Each photo's data information will carry your name on it.
• Don't post pregnancy belly pictures - there is a guy on the internet that collects them for sexual fetish purposes.

The drawbacks of protecting your photos are a little odd, but true - the more your photos are hidden, the less chance a faker has to get a hold of them, BUT the less people there are to spot that your photos are taken. Almost all the alerts I get about photo stealers don't come from the victims themselves, but others who spotted it because they recognized the pictures.

Disabling right mouse 'click to save' on your website isn't that protective - people can still see the URL of the photo and can access it. A java or Flash based photo album is only so useful - you can't right click to save, but any graphics program can take a screen capture, so you are still not protected.

Article on Fair Use, copyright and photo infringement
 

To all the fakers out there...

You can be traced to your internet service provider by every email you send and every post you make on a message board. Anyone you send email to has your IP address (a unique number assigned to your computer every time you sign on to the internet), and every message board owner (and many moderators) can see it as well. This allows them to ban you from their site and also trace you to your internet service provider, and complain about you to them. This could result in your internet service being terminated or suspended. You can also be permanently banned by your service provider from being able to access the websites you fake at.

If you use proxy servers (places that let you use one of their IP addresses), people will assume you are faking right away, because people without something to hide don't need to hide their true IP address. So you may think you're being clever, but you're really giving yourself away almost immediately.

Families with multiples are a very close knit community, and if you steal pictures or impersonate others, you will get found out, and people will research every bit of information you give out and will discover your lies. Often the people you have angered can find out who you really are.

Teenagers who have been caught faking have had their parents called by angry families who have tracked down their personal info, their schools and school boards have been informed in cases where they were using school computers to send messages, and in some cases local police and the FBI have been contacted if gifts or money have ever been offered or asked for. If you are faking and someone suspects, you can be very sure that many people will be researching your real information, and more often than not they will find it. The internet is not as anonymous as you think.

Legal action can be taken against a faker if they are impersonating a real family and stealing photos.
 

Faker Busting Sites

Expose Trolls - Dedicated to outing fakers around the internet.

Multiple Birth Fakers - For discussing fakers in the multiple birth community.

Faker's Busted forum - A forum for outing fakers all over the internet.

Faking Pregnant - LJ for those outing pregnancy fakers.

Fake LJ Deaths - For outing people who created a fake person and have them suffer from an illness or die to get sympathy.

LJ Fakers - For outing people on LJ and around the internet.

Cyber SEALs - Busts those faking being Navy SEALs

FaceTheJury.com: Spot The Faker - Forum for the picture rating site that calls out people using others' photos.
 

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