During the large-scale Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes, a fake page of an Armenian news site appeared on the Internet, urging people to take pictures of the events and send them to the page.

Images with the logo of this page are used by hacked Facebook pages with tens of thousands of followers.

The fake page of “Hraparak” newspaper on Instagram

A fake page of “Hraparak” newspaper, hraparak_tv, has been created on Instagram. The page, posing as a media outlet, asks followers, “Take photos or videos of your events and send them to us to get it published.”

The page is most likely managed by Azerbaijan․ It publishes information about the allegedly killed high-ranking Armenian servicemen, occupied Armenian positions, and great losses.

The page was created a few months ago but has started actively publishing during the recent Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes.

The page also has a logo, which is sometimes placed on published photos.

Hacked Armenian pages with 25,000 and 30,000 followers spread panicky content

The pictures with the logo of the fake Hraparak_tv page are also used by the Facebook pages Armenia CT and Toon Complex LLC.

Armenia CT has 25,000 followers and also presents itself as an Armenian page, but spreads pro-Azerbaijani content.

Thus, in recent days, the page has been actively sharing pictures of allegedly killed high-ranking Armenian servicemen, writing about Armenian losses.

The page was created in 2013 under the name “CLICS TOYS Armenia.” In the old publications of the page, you can really find pictures of children’s toys, which testifies to the fact that the page was hacked at some point. Now the information about the location of its administrators is not visible, it was hidden by the two coordinators of the page.

The same content is shared by another hacked Armenian Facebook page, Toon Complex LLC. This page was created in 2012 as a home accessories store. As in the previous case, the page management site was hidden by the two coordinators of the page.

Pages are managed from the same point

All of these pages share almost the same content. They all use the same logo. Moreover, the texts of the publications are reproduced, there is the same typo in them.

The pages post old news, for example, that General Gabriel Balayan was infected with the coronavirus (the news is three months old). The news about the killed servicemen is often from the days of the April 2016 war.

Along with the pages, the same content is distributed to hacked user accounts.

Both pages use the Hraparak_tv fake page logo. Along with identical content, this may indicate that fake or broken pages on Hraparak_tv, Armenia CT, and Toon Complex LLC are managed from the same point.

Karine Ghazaryan