Did a man from Jackson, Mississippi hack into college computer to give all students since 2010 a refund? No, that's not true, some joker uploaded a random mugshot to a prank website, added a good headline and the story went viral. Unfortunately for those suffering from student debt overload, none of it is real. The article fail to mention which college it is about and no real news sources have reported on it.
The story originated from an article published NSFNews on September 4, 2018 titled "Jackson man arrested for hacking a college computer and returning all funds to students since 2010" (archived here) which opened:
A Jackson Ms man is facing charges for hacking into an administrators computer at a college campus and refunding all payments made by students since 2010. Those payments include tuition, books, housing, and meal plans. More on this story tonight at 10.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Jackson man arrested for hacking a college computer and returning all funds to students since 2010
A Jackson Ms man is facing charges for hacking into an administrators computer at a college campus and refunding all payments made by students since 2010. Those payments include tuition, books, housing, and meal plans. More on this story tonight at 10.
The site that published the story is a prank website where users can submit their own headline, description and photo to create realistic looking prank news articles.
Users don't even need to upload their own image, there is a built-in search function that will pull an appropriate image from Google image search.
The site is part of a larger network of prank sites all using the same basic layout but sometimes in different languages. It appears to be run by a Belgian company named Mediavibes or Media Vibes which is managed by a man named Nicolas Gouriou according to registration records.
Each site in the network comes with a disclaimer (sometimes translated into a different language) that reads:
This website is an entertainment website, jokes are created by users. These are humourous jokes, fantasy, fictional, that should not be seriously taken or as a source of information.
So don't fall for this prank now that we've warned you about it!
We wrote about nsfnews.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Shark NOT Found By Boat Ramp in Gallipolis Ohio
- Fake News: Urban Meyer NOT Cleared Of All Charges From Panel (Yet?)
- Fake News: NO Snakes Released in Hinckley Lake, Did NOT Cause Mass Hysteria
- Fake News: Police NOT Looking For Massillon Man Involved in Shooting That Lead To Death of Another Man
- Fake News: Red Lobster NOT To Build New Restaurant on Hamilton's Westside
