International media are often denied access to the area, making it difficult to verify accounts.

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It remained impossible to verify activists' accounts of the fighting in Homs or to confirm casualty tolls.

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Of course, it is impossible to verify all of the accounts of the boys, but the doctors have no doubt about their trauma.

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And last month, after a judge had thrown out two additional charges, his trial began on four counts: failing to ensure that a financial stability group delivered the required results, failing to take action to reduce the size of Iceland's banking system, failing to verify the move of accounts from Landsbanki bank's Icesave program, and failing to focus more Cabinet meetings on the crisis.

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Turning to international news, experts tell Hong Kong's South China Morning Post that Beijing will verify the purpose of any bank accounts linked to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before taking any action against Pyongyang.

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In order to mitigate the risk of fraud, Affirm prompts users to connect with their Gmail or Facebook accounts, which allow the company to verify the identity of the user.

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The key is to remain skeptical, avoid unknown links, verify claims and make sure you change passwords on important accounts on a fairly regular basis.

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"Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles -- just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose, " the company said.

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In November, Pinterest rolled out "business" accounts that allow companies to use their corporate name on their pinboard and to verify that they link to an official corporate website.

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