#FactCheck-AI-generated video falsely shared as Saudi airstrike on Yemen's Sanaa International Airport

Introduction

Charity and donation scams have continued to persist and are amplified in the digital era, where messages spread rapidly through WhatsApp, emails, and social media. These fraudulent schemes involve threat actors impersonating legitimate charities, government appeals, or social causes to solicit funds. Apart from targeting the general public, they also impact entities such as reputable tech firms and national institutions. Victims are tricked into transferring money or sharing personal information, often under the guise of urgent humanitarian efforts or causes.

A recent incident involves a fake WhatsApp message claiming to be from the Indian Ministry of Defence. The message urged users to donate to a fund for “modernising the Indian Army.” The government later confirmed this message was entirely fabricated and part of a larger scam. It emphasised that no such appeal had been issued by the Ministry, and urged citizens to verify such claims through official government portals before responding.

Tech Industry and Donation-Related Scams

Large corporations are also falling prey. According to media reports, an American IT company recently terminated around 700 Indian employees after uncovering a donation-related fraud. At least 200 of them were reportedly involved in a scheme linked to Telugu organisations in the US. The scam echoed a similar situation that had previously affected Apple, where Indian employees were fired after being implicated in donation fraud tied to the Telugu Association of North America (TANA). Investigations revealed that employees had made questionable donations to these groups in exchange for benefits such as visa support or employment favours.

Common People Targeted

While organisational scandals grab headlines, the common man remains equally or even more vulnerable. In a recent incident, a man lost over ₹1 lakh after clicking on a WhatsApp link asking for donations to a charity. Once he engaged with the link, the fraudsters manipulated him into making repeated transfers under various pretexts, ranging from processing fees to refund-related transactions (social engineering). Scammers often employ a similar set of tactics using urgency, emotional appeal, and impersonation of credible platforms to convince and deceive people.

Cautionary Steps

CyberPeace recommends adopting a cautious and informed approach when making charitable donations, especially online. Here are some key safety measures to follow:

1. Verify Before You Donate. Always double-check the legitimacy of donation appeals. Use official government portals or the official charities' websites. Be wary of unfamiliar phone numbers, email addresses, or WhatsApp forwards asking for money.
   
   
2. Avoid Clicking on Suspicious Links
   Never click on links or download attachments from unknown or unverified sources. These could be phishing links/ malware designed to steal your data or access your bank accounts.
   
   
3. Be Sceptical of Urgency Scammers bank on creating a false sense of urgency to pressure their victims into donating quickly. One must take the time to evaluate before responding.

4. Use Secure Payment Channels Ensure that one makes donations only through platforms that are secure, trusted, and verified. These include official UPI handles, government-backed portals (like PM CARES or Bharat Kosh), among others.
   
   
5. Report Suspected Fraud In case one receives suspicious messages or falls victim to a scam, they are encouraged to report it to cybercrime authorities via cybercrime.gov.in (1930) or the local police, as prompt reporting can prevent further fraud.
   

Conclusion

Charity should never come at the cost of trust and safety. While donating to a good cause is noble, doing it mindfully is essential in today’s scam-prone environment. Always remember: a little caution today can save a lot tomorrow.

References

• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/misleading-message-circulating-on-whatsapp-related-to-donation-for-armys-modernisation-govt/articleshow/120672806.cms?from=mdr
• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/american-company-sacks-700-of-these-200-in-donation-scam-related-to-telugu-organisations-similar-to-firing-at-apple/articleshow/120075189.cms
• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/apple-fires-some-indians-over-donation-fraud-tana-under-scrutiny/articleshow/117034457.cms
• https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/man-gets-link-for-donation-and-charity-on-whatsapp-loses-over-rs-1-lakh-after-clicking-on-it-2688616-2025-03-04 

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Executive Summary:

A misleading video of a child covered in ash allegedly circulating as the evidence for attacks against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. However, the  investigation revealed that the video is actually from Gaza, Palestine, and was filmed following an Israeli airstrike in July 2024. The claim linking the video to Bangladesh is false and misleading.

Claims:

A viral video claims to show a child in Bangladesh covered in ash as evidence of attacks on Hindu minorities.

Fact Check:

Upon receiving the viral posts, we conducted a Google Lens search on keyframes of the video, which led us to a X post posted by Quds News Network. The report identified the video as footage from Gaza, Palestine, specifically capturing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in July 2024.

The caption of the post reads, “Journalist Hani Mahmoud reports on the deadly Israeli attack yesterday which targeted a UN school in Nuseirat, killing at least 17 people who were sheltering inside and injuring many more.”

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To further verify, we examined the video footage where the watermark of Al Jazeera News media could be seen, We found the same post posted on the Instagram account on 14 July, 2024 where we confirmed that the child in the video had survived a massacre caused by the Israeli airstrike on a school shelter in Gaza. 

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Additionally, we found the same video uploaded to CBS News' YouTube channel, where it was clearly captioned as "Video captures aftermath of Israeli airstrike in Gaza",  further confirming its true origin.

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We found no credible reports or evidence were found linking this video to any incidents in Bangladesh. This clearly implies that the viral video was falsely attributed to Bangladesh. 

Conclusion:

The video circulating on social media which shows a child covered in ash as the evidence of attack against Hindu minorities is false and misleading. The investigation leads that the video originally originated from Gaza, Palestine and documents the aftermath of an Israeli air strike in July 2024.  

• Claims: A video shows a child in Bangladesh covered in ash as evidence of attacks on Hindu minorities.
• Claimed by: Facebook
• Fact Check: False & Misleading

A dark screen has always meant one thing to most of us: the television is off, and whatever we say in the room is ours again. A new investigation into LG's smart TVs suggests that assumption may no longer hold, and the findings are detailed enough, and corroborated widely enough, that they deserve a careful look rather than a shrug.

What the investigation actually found

On 7 September 2026, hardware review outlet Gamers Nexus published a 135 minute video investigation, the product of more than 500 hours of testing and roughly 70,000 dollars in resources, conducted alongside hardware channel Level1Techs and independent security researchers. The team tested retail LG OLED televisions, including the current flagship G5 model, using Wireshark, a widely used network packet analysis tool that lets researchers see exactly what data a device is sending and receiving.

What they reported was substantial. Using the UPnP protocol, a standard that lets devices on a network automatically discover one another, the televisions were found actively sweeping the entire home network, mapping phones, smartwatches, laptops, and other connected hardware that had nothing to do with the television itself, including devices belonging to people who were not part of the testing. The sets also collected information about neighbouring Wi-Fi networks, their names and signal strength, data that combined with other signals can help build a fairly precise picture of where a television physically sits and who else shares its environment.

The audio findings drew the most attention, and for good reason. Researchers reported pulling clear microphone audio from a television with a dark screen, in standby mode, and repeated the test after physically disconnecting the set's Ethernet cable. According to the investigation, speech spoken near the television during that disconnected period was stored locally and then uploaded automatically the moment connectivity was restored, with researchers reporting audio pickup from roughly 60 feet away through a wall. Muting the television's primary microphone through its settings menu reportedly did not fully solve the problem either, since the team said they were able to pull a usable recording from a second, less obvious microphone that the mute control did not appear to govern. Voice input, according to the reporting, was also converted into plain text and saved in on device logs, with the microphone said to remain active for ten to fifteen seconds after speech ended.

Separately, the investigation also examined Automatic Content Recognition, commonly called ACR, a longstanding smart TV feature that samples audio or video snippets and matches them against a reference database to identify what is being watched. Gamers Nexus reported that LG's implementation continued functioning even when the television was used purely as an HDMI monitor for a laptop or game console, meaning switching inputs away from the TV's own smart platform did not switch ACR off. The team also said security researchers identified unpatched remote access vulnerabilities in LG's webOS software, and separately found code associated with residential proxy functionality, which, if accurate, could theoretically allow a device's internet connection to be quietly used to route other people's traffic.

What LG has said

LG's public position predates this specific investigation and has not changed since. Responding earlier this year to a Texas lawsuit targeting several television manufacturers over ACR practices, the company stated that LG Electronics reaffirms that LG TVs do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations, describing voice recognition as an optional, user initiated feature that only processes voice data when a user activates it for a specific request. LG has reportedly not issued a specific response addressing the Gamers Nexus findings directly, though multiple outlets note the company was approached for comment. It is worth noting LG had already settled with Texas regulators earlier this year, agreeing to stop collecting viewing data without informed consent, a separate matter concerning ACR rather than the standby microphone claims raised in this newer investigation.

The commercial context that makes this matter

None of this data collection happens in a vacuum. LG Ad Solutions, the company's advertising division, openly markets first party ACR data and cross device advertising reach to advertisers, citing access to 49 million LG smart TVs in the United States and 363 million connected devices reachable through them. That figure confirms the scale of commercial value sitting inside the largest screen in most homes, though it is worth being precise here: that statistic describes LG's advertising reach broadly, and does not by itself prove that every one of those secondary devices was specifically discovered through a television's own local network scanning, a distinction some careful reporting on this story has been right to preserve rather than collapse into a single alarming number. Multiple LG Ad Solutions executives, according to footage referenced in coverage of the investigation, have spoken candidly about tying a household's viewing habits to the other devices under the same roof, describing the underlying business model in terms that leave little ambiguity about how central this data pipeline is to the company's advertising strategy. This is not a hidden side project; it is a openly promoted revenue stream built on exactly the kind of information the Gamers Nexus investigation says a television collects well beyond what a customer would reasonably expect from a screen they believe is switched off.

Why this extends well past the living room

Smart televisions and large connected displays are not confined to homes. They sit in hospital waiting rooms and patient areas, hotel rooms, corporate boardrooms, and office common areas, environments where the conversations happening nearby, and the information displayed on screen, frequently carry a genuine expectation of confidentiality. A device capable of logging speech and identifying on screen content in a home is the same device, running the same software, in every one of those settings.

What LG owes an honest answer to

Several questions remain squarely LG's to answer, and general reassurance language will not resolve them. Which specific models and firmware versions were affected, and under what settings. What precisely activates the microphone, and for how long it stays active. What is stored locally on the device, what gets transmitted externally, and under what circumstances. Whether any of this collection continues while the display is in standby rather than actively in use. And critically, whether an ordinary user, without specialised network analysis tools, has any reliable way to independently verify that microphone access, ACR, and cross device tracking are genuinely disabled once turned off in a settings menu.

CyberPeace Advisory 

What owners can do while those answers are pending

Until LG addresses the specific findings in detail, several practical steps meaningfully reduce exposure. 

1. Disable voice recognition and ACR through the television's settings menu, even knowing the investigation raises questions about whether every microphone path is fully governed by that toggle. 
2. Review all privacy and data sharing permissions the television requests, and install the latest available security updates, since some of the vulnerabilities reported concern webOS software flaws LG could patch. 
3. Place the television on a separate guest or IoT network segment, isolated from computers, phones, and other sensitive devices, so that even if the TV's own network behaviour cannot be fully controlled, it cannot see or map everything else in the home. 
4. For genuinely sensitive environments, hospitals, boardrooms, and similar settings, the more reliable option is disconnecting the television from the network entirely and routing all content through a separately secured streaming device instead.

A dark screen has never meant a device is truly powered down in any technical sense, but this investigation is a useful, concrete reminder that the gap between how a device appears and what it is actually doing can be considerably wider than most people assume. Confirming exactly how wide that gap is, model by model and setting by setting, is now squarely LG's responsibility to demonstrate, not simply assert.

References

1. Notebookcheck, "LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices." https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-smart-TVs-caught-logging-audio-with-screen-off-and-snooping-on-local-devices.1391214.0.html
2. Cybernews, "LG smart TVs may log voice commands and scan homes." https://cybernews.com/privacy/up-to-200m-lg-smart-tvs-could-be-secretly-listening-in-on-conversations/
3. All About Cookies, "LG Smart TVs Caught Listening With the Screen Off and Snooping Around Your Wi-Fi." https://allaboutcookies.org/lg-smart-tvs-snooping
4. Decrypt, "Your LG TV Might Still Be Listening to You, Even When It Looks Like It's Off." https://decrypt.co/377637/lg-tv-might-be-listening-even-when-off
5. Yahoo Tech, "Your LG TV Might Still Be Listening to You, Even When It Looks Like It's Off." https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/lg-tv-might-still-listening-214604684.html
6. TechRadar, "LG's gaming monitors and TVs are facing a user revolt." https://www.techradar.com/televisions/lgs-gaming-monitors-and-tvs-are-facing-a-user-revolt
7. Quest Review Center, "LG faces renewed privacy backlash over smart TV data collection and monitor practices." https://questreviewcenter.com/smart-home-tech/lg-faces-renewed-privacy-backlash-over-smart-tv-data-collection-and-monitor-practices/
8. The CyberSec Guru, "LG Smart TV Spying Exposed: 216M TVs, Full Breakdown." https://thecybersecguru.com/news/lg-smart-tv-spying-investigation/
9. Ynetnews, "Your LG TV may be listening: Researchers uncover audio recording and network scanning." https://www.ynetnews.com/tech-and-digital/article/bydiqhhume
10. UNILAD Tech, "Major TV brand accused of snooping on customers while devices are supposed to be off." https://www.uniladtech.com/gadgets/lg-tv-accused-snooping-customers-devices-off-021514-20260907

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