Warning: ISIS Sending invites to WhatsApp Interschools Group-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
ISIS is using a WhatsApp group called “Interschools” as a recruitment tool; users are not able to exit the group once they join, and ISIS can use it to get their home addresses.
The Truth:
There’s no indication that ISIS is using a WhatsApp group called “Interschool” or “Interschools” as a recruitment tool, or for any other purposes.
That rumor began circulating in early June 2017 when social media posts like this one repeated variations of a warning that ISIS was sending invites to an WhatsApp group called interschool. Those who accept the invite, the warning goes, are not allowed to leave the group, and they give ISIS their home address:
It’s not clear exactly where this rumor started. It seems likely, however, that the warning was spawned from reports that ISIS-linked terrorists used encrypted WhatsApp messaging services to plan and carry out the London bridge attack that left seven people dead on June 3, 2017 — just days before the warning went viral.
And it should be noted that the WhatsApp interschools warning is almost identical to an earlier (and fruitless) warning about a WhatsApp group called “Firdaus We Ascend” being used by ISIS:
There is a Whatsapp group called ‘Firdaus we ascend’, if invited, don’t join the group, it belongs to Daesh*. If you join the group you will not be able to exit from it, be vigilant, please inform others – send it to your relatives and children on WhatsApp so that they remain careful.
*Daesh is the arabic name for ISIS.
Again, there was no indication that either of these warnings are legitimate. There also wasn’t any indication that there are WhatsApp groups that users are not able to leave once they join. The process is fairly simple, and a step-by-step guide can be found here.