What was claimed
A 73-year-old woman with “chronic memory loss” called Naomi Adams has gone missing in various locations in the UK.
Our verdict
This is a hoax. The image shared in these Facebook posts is of a woman with a different name who went missing, and was subsequently found, in the United States.
Posts shared in several local Facebook groups claiming a user’s elderly mother, Naomi Adams, has gone missing are hoaxes.
One such post, shared in a group for Gloucester residents, says: “MISSING! Our Mom, Naomi Adams aged 73 drove out last night with our dog Cami and she still hasn’t returned. She was last seen in 📍 Gloucester
“She doesn’t know where she’s going, she has chronic memory loss. There is a silver alert activated on her. Please help bump this post so we can get her home safely🙏🏻”
Posts with nearly identical text have also been shared to groups for residents in Cornwall, Bradford and Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, but in each case, the location has been changed.
Besides the fact that the woman couldn’t have been “last seen” in so many different places, the photo of the woman in front of a green building attached to the posts provides clear evidence that these are not genuine appeals.
Using reverse image search Full Fact found this image is not of a woman called Naomi Adams. It actually shows a Missouri woman called Susan Behrend, who reportedly went missing in November 2024, before she was found safe.
The hoax posts also say that a “silver alert” has been activated. This refers to a way of notifying the public about missing people who may be elderly or cognitively impaired that operates in the US—it’s unlikely the term would be used for people missing in the UK.
Many versions of the post also have their comments sections disabled, which Derbyshire Police has previously said is an indication that a post may not be genuine. It prevents other social media users from alerting people to the hoax, and a genuine post would be unlikely to prevent the sharing of potentially helpful information.
We regularly see similar posts falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people and missing or injured pets in Facebook community groups.
Hoaxes can damage people’s trust in local community news, because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
You can find out more by watching an episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain, which features our investigation into the problem of hoax posts on Facebook. Our guide also offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image shared in these posts shows a woman of a different name who was the subject of a missing person appeal in the US in 2024.
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