4 December 2023
False

Urban myth: Unsubstantiated rumors about white “kidnapping” vans stoke fear around the world

From the U.S. to France to the Philippines, false warnings and fake videos have spread.

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Screengrab of a Dec. 7, 2019 Twitter post (with the location tagged as Chicago in the US) which had 219,300 retweets and 175,800 likes.
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Screengrab of a Dec. 5, 2019 Twitter post from a user in the U.S. claiming a white van abducted a girl at the First Colony Mall, which received 2,200 retweets and 2,400 likes.
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Screengrab of a Nov. 22, 2019 Facebook post (with the location tagged as Philadelphia in the U.S.) which had 21 shares
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Screengrab of Facebook posts from September and October 2019 in French about white vans (camionnette blanche) kidnapping children in France
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Screengrab of a Dec. 6, 2019 tweet from the First Colony Mall responding to the user @kyxkristine
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Screengrab of a Dec. 10, 2019, CNN Philippines Twitter post, which quoted a Philippine national police spokesman saying investigations showed that some people shared similar videos just to scare the public
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Screengrab of Facebook post by the Newnan Police Department confirming that the department had looked into two reports of a driver of a white van acting suspiciously and stating there were no reports of a kidnapping or attempted abduction.
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Screengrab of WALB News10 website regarding a case where police said a reported kidnapping involving a suspicious white van was a false claim

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