Nearly 80,000 fake signatures removed from petition for re-vote on UK leaving EU

British parliamentary officials have removed about 77,000 fake signatures from an online petition calling for a new referendum.

Number of petition signatures collected as of 7:40 a.m. Vietnam time. Screenshot

"We are investigating allegations of fraudulent use of the petition website. Signatures found to be fake will be removed," the UK House of Commons announced on Twitter.

The petition's author, William Oliver Healey, argues that the government should hold a new referendum because the winning vote was less than 60% and the turnout was below 75%. In the UK referendum on June 23, 17.4 million people (51.9%) voted to leave the EU, compared to 16.1 million (48.1%) who voted to remain, with a turnout of 72.2%, according to the UK Electoral Commission.

According to the Telegraph, a suspicious number of signatures have come from places outside the UK – in some cases more than the entire population. Some 39,411 residents of Vatican City appear to have signed as of yesterday morning, despite the population being just 800. In North Korea, one of the world’s least connected countries, 23,778 people have expressed their disappointment online about Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

Overall, it is unclear whether the recorded results accurately reflect the location from which the signature was added. Internet users can simply hide their true location by using IP address hiding software. They can also use special code to automatically generate fake signatures.

Web data shows the number of signatures from IPs in the UK jumped from 365,483 at 9:21 p.m. local time to 2.4 million at 11:01 p.m. on June 25.

Hackers on the online forum 4Chan have boasted that they were involved in the “prank,” which, if true, would raise serious concerns about the government’s cybersecurity while undermining the legitimacy of future petitions.

A spokesman for the UK Petitions Committee has denied any evidence of a cyber-attack, but admitted the website had seen unprecedented traffic in recent days.

“The apparent increase in the number of signatures in a short period of time was simply due to the results not being updated until then,” she said.

"The petition site was not hacked, and there was no behind-the-scenes data manipulation. Fraudulent signatures have been, are being, and will continue to be removed, to ensure the integrity of the site."

According to VNE