A post that warns people against downloading two videos on namely — "Martinelli" and "Dance of the Pope" as they might contain virus and infect the users' devices is being circulated on social media platforms.
It adds that the message was originally shared on British Broadcasting Corporation () radio.
You can find an archive of the post .
Team WebQoof received a query about the viral claim on our WhatsApp tipline as well. More archives of similar claims can be found and .
What's the truth?: We found several news reports that called the viral claim about these particular videos being harmful a . These reports also warned users against forwarding such worrying messages.
Additionally, the Spanish police had termed the viral message as "false" in 2017. This clearly shows that the same message has been circulating for years.
How did we find that out?: On performing a simple keyword search on Google, we found a news in Forbes in March 2020.
The report mentioned that the message, which claimed that it was announced on BBC, about WhatsApp Gold was a hoax.
It said that two variations of message which warn people against downloading two videos named "Dance of the Pope" and "Martinelli" are also being shared. However, both of them are clearly hoax and not real.
The report further carried a quote from an information security veteran named Graham Cluley, who said that the clues of the message being a hoax are right there.
The report was published on 26 March 2020.
IT security company weighed in: A British security software company called Sophos had published a mentioning that WhatsApp Gold was actual malware and the advice to avoid it was valid.
However, it termed the claims about the two videos as a hoax.
It further noted that both these messages are old and one of them could be traced back to 2015.
The report was published on 23 March 2020.
Spanish police had called it a hoax too: The official X (formerly Twitter) handle of Spanish Police had that the message warning people against a video named "Martinelli" was false.
The post was published on 29 July 2017.
We have reached out to WhatsApp for more inputs on the viral claim and this report will be updated if and when a response is received.
Conclusion: It is evident that the message is old and the claim about two videos with a virus being circulated on WhatsApp is false.
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