At a glance:

• Claim: Online registration is available to be eligible for P4,000-financial aid from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Those who share the link to the registration form will also get P5,000 from GCash.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: The Facebook page and website that posted the claim are not affiliated with DSWD. Also, only individuals from low-income families are eligible for the government’s P1,000 (or up to P4,000 per family) worth of cash or “in-kind.”
• Why we fact-checked this: The Facebook page and website are posing as government agencies, which could deceive people into giving their personal information. Facebook’s monitoring tool also flagged the links for containing potentially dubious information.

Complete details:

A fake Facebook page named “DSWD News And Update 2021” posted on Wednesday, March 31, about online registration to get P4,000 financial aid from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

The page, which poses as DSWD, shared a link and wrote in its caption: “MAGREGISTER NA PARA MAKUHA ANG IYONG AYUDA!  I-SHARE SA LAHAT NG GROUP NYO + MAS MARAMING SHARE MAY DAG DAG NA P5,000.00 SA GCASH.”

(Register now to get your financial aid! Share this to all your Facebook groups – those who share this many times will receive P5,000 from GCash.)

The link redirects to ayudangbayandswd2021.blogspot.com.

This is false. Both the Facebook page “DSWD News And Update 2021” and the website ayudangbayandswd2021.blogspot.com are not affiliated with DSWD. Their posts are not official announcements from the agency.

DSWD’s official Facebook account has a verified blue checkmark next to its name, which can be found here. The agency’s official website is dswd.gov.ph.

On Monday, March 29, the government announced that it will distribute P1,000 worth of cash or goods to those affected by the new one-week lockdown in “NCR Plus,” but only those who belong to low-income families will receive the aid. The maximum amount families can receive is P4,000.

Local governments are also tasked to distribute the aid, and the DSWD will only “assist” the LGUs.

A look at the transparency section of the fake “DSWD News And Update 2021” Facebook page also showed that it was created only on March 13, and its name was changed on March 30 from “PhilSys National ID.” (The verified Facebook page of the PSA Philippine Identification System can be accessed here.)

As of writing, the fake page had over 15,500 likes on Facebook. Claim Check, Facebook’s monitoring tool that identifies potentially dubious posts shared on the platform, flagged the post for verification.

This is not the first time Rappler debunked a claim coming from a page posing as DSWD. In June, there also was a fake website that falsely claimed the DSWD is giving away P5,500 for every Facebook user. – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.