Monrovia – A viral link with a message that “The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has begun 2023 staff recruitment to various departments” is being shared through several social media messaging apps including WhatsApp and Messenger. The link has a message that encourage “interested applicants to click and apply”.
The link has attracted 8,954,208 reactions with 983,330 comments so far.
But is the link authentic?
Our Fact Checking Desk, after coming across the link, decided to check.
We clicked on the link, reviewed it, and observed that it carries the logo of ECOWAS but with a different URL or web address which reads: https://ecowas.int.programagency.info/
However, the actual ECOWAS web address or URL is: https://ecowas.int/
A further review of the purported ECOWAS Job application link displayed an application form that is also different from the regional body’s official job application form which can be obtained from its career portal.
The alleged job application form is written only in English while the ECOWAS official job application form is written in its official languages: English, French and Portuguese.
We also observed that whatever way a person fills the form or leaves the options open and apply a check mark in the box to indicate that he/she has completed the application and click ‘APPLY’, the individual’s application will be automatically received asking them to proceed to the next page to answer various questions.
After exhausting these steps, you are instantly selected, and you will be asked to invite friends and share the link until the blue bar is full.
In further quest to authenticate the link, we copied and pasted the URL of the purported site into an online tool which rates website domains. The online tool then described the website’s trust index as “very bad” to internet users. This means, the link is not trustworthy and should be avoided.
Meanwhile, we further checked and found out that ECOWAS is recruiting individual and technical consultants to provide specific services for short term. But these job openings are unrelated to the viral link being shared.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence gathered, we conclude that although ECOWAS is now recruiting consultants for short term services, the link claiming that “ECOWAS is recruiting staff to various departments is not authentic”. It is a fake link being shared.
IT experts term this act of sharing fake links as phishing and always warned internet users from clicking such link when it is shared because it might be a misleading means of interfering with people personal information or a bait to infuse malware or virus in individual devices. Therefore, internet users are cautioned against sharing and or opening these viral links.
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This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content.