Given that many celebrities and politicians had their Twitter accounts hacked on Wednesday in an apparent Bitcoin scam, the site was inundated with screenshots of their bogus messages asking for cryptocurrency donations.
Among them were billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, as well as former U.S. President Barack Obama and rapper Kanye West.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also among the compromised reports in some US media reports.
But there is no evidence that a screenshot, allegedly taken from Mr Netanyahu's Twitter account, is anything but a fake.
Nonetheless, the rumor has persisted and spread, with Chinese media directly citing reports on U.S. outlets, including CNN, which included the Israeli leader's account on the hacker list.
The Times of Israel also collected reports from agencies that included Netanyahu in the list of compromised people.
The tweet translates from Hebrew: "I am returning to my community because of Covid-19! All Bitcoins that will be sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $ 1,000 I will give you back $ 2,000! I am doing this only in the next 30 minutes! Have fun. "
The Israeli embassy in London told the BBC: "The tweet in question has not been tweeted by the Prime Minister's official account. We believe it must be fake."
The BBC did not find evidence that the tweet ever appeared on Netanyahu's timeline and the message itself appears to have been shared only as a screenshot, without linking to his Twitter account or the tweet in question.
Furthermore, the message appears to be the only non-English tweet published at the time and Netanyahu himself would be the only non-US account targeted by scammers.
This is not the first time that a prominent politician's fake tweet creates online confusion in a rapidly developing situation.
- Major U.S. Twitter accounts hacked into the Bitcoin scam
- Twitter hack: what went wrong and why it matters
In the aftermath of the attack on London Bridge in November last year, a fake tweet allegedly written by then Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn suggested sympathy for the attacker who was shot dead by police.
Like Netanyahu's alleged tweet, Corbyn's fake post was only distributed as a screenshot, with no link to the tweet in question.
How can you separate the true from the false?
By Marianna Spring, disinformation specialist and social media reporterUnsurprisingly, during the chaos of this Twitter hack, fake screenshots of public figures targeted by the same Bitcoin scam came to light.
It's worryingly easy to generate fake screenshots of tweets online and attribute them to public figures, even to the Israeli prime minister. It is something that we have seen happen during the elections and the latest news.
So how can you separate the real from the fake?
Always pay attention to screenshots. Make sure the account in the photo matches the official account's handle, image and Twitter name.
Check the account in question to see if the tweet exists and if there are other unusual activities going on in its feed.
Many tweets of Bitcoin scams were eliminated fairly quickly, however, so it doesn't always help.
Comparing the screenshot with the other real tweets of great public figures was the best way to identify the fakes. The exact same message has been repeatedly tweeted in English, so messages in another language or with any modification to the phrasing would be suspicious.
And if you can't verify it's true, don't share!