Boston bombings: Warning over explosion tragedy hoax images

It was an image shared thousands of times on social media soon after the Boston Marathon explosions - that of a blonde, bespectacled girl running along a street and wearing a red T-shirt, runner's gear and a bib.

The image, in some versions, is accompanied by this message: "See this little girl? She died today. She was running the marathon for the Sandy hook (sic) kids. She's 8. Repost for respect of her. Wear red tommmarow (sic) to support her and all the others who died."

Only the girl did not die - she is still alive, according to a Virginia charity whose 5K race the child was pictured walking in last year to raise money for the medical bills of sick youngsters. Evidence of that event is on the girl's shirt: "Joe Cassella", for the Joe Cassella Foundation in Leesburg.

An eight-year-old boy was among three killed and more than 170 wounded in Monday's blasts in Boston, and a group ran in memory of the Sandy Hook schoolhouse shootings in Connecticut. Those factors likely added plausibility to the bogus photo in the bloody aftermath of the bombing on Monday.

Like numerous disasters before, hoaxes and conspiracies have popped up in the chaotic first days after the tragedy, days when people want to offer help and support while investigations have barely begun.

They are also days when thieves get to work setting up pleas for money via social media, phone calls and text, according to Ken Berger, president of CharityNavigator.org, a US organisation which monitors scams after disasters, offers advice on giving and rates nonprofits of all kinds.

"The problem is, the head's not connected to the heart," Mr Berger said. "People want to move too fast."

It is unclear whether donations were solicited using the young runner's photo, said Vivi Cassella, the Virginia foundation's president and sister-in-law of the cancer victim it honours. But the image still caused problems.

Just hours after the photo began circulating, the foundation's website crashed under the weight of more than one million views. A Twitter account that spread the image early on was suspended. Some who shared the photo on Facebook left messages of apology on the foundation's page after they learned it was a fraud, Ms Cassella said.

"It's been crazy for us," she said. "If people had only taken the time to just listen, that it was a little boy, not a little girl, that she was wearing a Joe Cassella 5k bib and it had nothing to do with the Boston Marathon."

Also wearing a red shirt was a man in a fast-moving photo kneeling over a female Boston victim, with one shared explanation that she was his girlfriend and he had planned to propose as she crossed the finish line but she died before he had a chance.

The truth was that he was a stranger offering assistance. The person on the ground wasn't a runner but a spectator who was injured and survived.

Whether or not such shared photos come with pleas for money, the motive to do something quickly soon after disaster strikes is hard to resist, Mr Berger said.

"The irony is, your chances of getting ripped off are remarkably high in the early days for that very reason," he said.

"People with the first thing up are the ones who may be the most loosey goosey, poorly organised or, worse still, thieves."

Everything from bogus charities to lost relatives who never existed surfaced after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Four years later, after Hurricane Katrina, the FBI found 4,000 bogus websites, many operated by criminals overseas who stole the personal information of givers and their money, Mr Berger said.

Donations intended for victims of Hurricane Sandy were allegedly diverted for personal use by the operators of at least one charity, he said.