Kozhikode: The Nipah outbreak that killed 16 people in June and the century's worst floods last month also triggered a deluge of fake news on social media.
A few techies from the Cyber Park here, foreseeing such a situation, launched a platform for sharing reliable information helping the authorities fight the menace a great deal.
During the Nipah virus attack, the health authorities advised people to download the Qkopy for authentic information and provided the link on its website.
The app came handy for the authorities for disseminating the real status and fight the disinformation campaign during the post-flood epidemic as well.
“The mobile number registered with the Qkopy will be the source, and the followers who want to receive instant updates and messages must save this number on their mobile phones with the Qkopy app installed,” its founder CEO Arun Perooli said. “The alerts will directly go to these phones from the government department or any agency. No fake accounts can be created on Qkopy, mainly because one could only register with a valid mobile number.”
The Kozhikode city traffic police used the app for giving the public instant alerts and awareness to thousands of people in the region. All those who saved the number of traffic department on their phones started getting these alerts.
So far thousands of people had already made use of the technology for reliable messages, developed by the firm supported by the Kerala Startup Mission.
