You should probably stop sharing these misleading viral 'maps' of the Australian bushfires

• Enormous bushfires are raging across swathes of land in Australia.
• However, a number of maps and satellite photos have gone viral, which misrepresent the scale of the fires.
• Insider has rounded up some examples to watch out for.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The bushfires currently tearing through Australia are enormous, deadly, and in many cases unprecedented.

From actors including Margot Robbie and comedians like Celeste Barber to social media users across the globe, many have reacted in horror to devastating blazes that continue to rage through large areas of Australia.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of representing the scale and size of the blazes visually has unfortunately led to a number of viral photos on social media, which are either misleading or entirely faked.

It's hard to stem the flow — especially when they're being shared by celebrities and social media influencers — but it's worth keeping an eye out for these ones in particular.

1. This 'satellite photo' of the bushfires

Though Rihanna spreading the word is appreciated, this image is somewhat misleading.

It pulls accurate data from NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management Systems (FIRMS) and gives a correct view — at the time — of where fires were blazing, but doesn't quite accurately represent scale.

The glow of the 3D fire effect also makes the fires seem much larger than they actually are.

Brisbane-based creator Anthony Hearsey made a post, saying he did not intend to mislead with the image.

"People have shared this image with the caption 'This is a NASA photograph.' This image has been flagged as a result," he stated. "This is a 3D visualization of the fires in Australia. NOT A PHOTO. Think of this as a graph."

You can probably keep sharing this one — as long as you're not calling it a satellite photo.

2. These alarming images and overlays from MyFireWatch

Sites like MyFireWatch, which is operated by the Western Australian government, provide a great service.

But its fire map isn't intended to show an overall scale of blazes in Australia.

Each indicator on the map represents a fire currently burning in Australia at any scale. That could be an enormous fire front, or it could be a small campfire that's got out of hand.

Unfortunately, some users on social are using MyFireWatch maps as an overlay on maps as a guide for the severity of fires.

Though it is accurate in pinpointing the location of fires and the size of Australia compared to the US, it isn't giving you a proper understanding of the scale of the individual fires.

3. A totally inexplicable tweet from the US ABC News, who later issued this correction

This particular example of a map of Australia superimposed over the US, as reported by Buzzfeed News, received swift and unrelenting backlash from Australian users, who pointed out the fire-affected regions shown in the original image do not at all correspond with reality.

The above correction was later issued.

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