Online donation platform draws suspicions after incorrect info published

[File photo: Xinhua]

An online donation platform has drawn suspicion from netizens after donation recipient profiles appeared with the same photos but different personal information, reports the Beijing Youth Daily.

The charity platform called "Fenbeichou" gained lots of attention on the popular social media app WeChat with the slogan "Donate one yuan to help change his or her life" after it was launched on December 22.

By logging into the website and entering their birthday, users can search profiles of donation recipients that share their birthday. The name, photo, and some personal information about the recipient are listed in the profile.

However, many netizens found cases in which one photo appeared on different profiles with different birthdays and personal information. In one case, a profile listed a birthday of February 29, 2009, a date that does not exist.

Lingfenbei Tech, the company that runs the online donation platform, said on December 23 that the mistakes were due to the fact that the system was still being tested.

It added that the company was undertaking a small-scale test of the platform on December 22 and did not expect the burst of popularity it received. It had planned to officially launch the platform on December 25. Developers of the online donation platform are working to fix the errors reported by users.

The online donation platform was co-founded with the Ai You Foundation, a charity based in Shenzhen. The donation recipients are all students from poverty-stricken families in Chuxiong county, south China's Yunnan province, according to Lingfenbei Tech.

Local poverty relief workers provided the information about the recipients, and the families of the students approved its publication on the "Feibeichou" platform, said the company.

The platform has reportedly received about 440,000 yuan in donations (around 66,920 USD) by Saturday afternoon, which go directly to the Ai You Foundation. The Foundation is responsible for distributing the donations to local poverty alleviation authorities.