A hoax published some weeks back regarding the legal drinking age being raised in a number of countries, including the United States and Canada, has gone viral on the Internet. The original prank regarding the legal drinking age being raised to 25 in the United States was circulated by a bogus and amateurishly written post on Sunday Times Daily, a website that permits users to develop their own fake news and "trick your friends by sharing the item on Facebook, Twitter and other social network."

Interestingly, one post published in this website stated that while the legal drinking age in the United States and the UK will be changed to 25 years, another said that in Canada it will be raised to 23 years.

Unfortunately, many people are still of the view that the posts are genuine and they have been complaining on social media about the injustice of the drinking age being raised.

At first sight, the post seems to be genuine, as the site uses logos from the BBC and ABC. Such hoax news helps the website to generate traffic and make money from advertisments, but is not reliable for real news.

The website also comes with a disclaimer, which reads, "We are sorry, but you were tricked! It was just a joke...Don't worry, you are not the only one. [Millions of] people already fell for this. If you liked the joke, you can share it and trick your friends. Also you can create a joke of your own clicking the button below!"

Earlier, the website generated other similar viral hoaxes, such as Luis Suarez, the Uruguay and Liverpool striker, being tested positive for use of banned substances. Another such hoax post said that England would be awarded a rematch against Uruguay in the Brazil 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Yet another said that all schools will be closed for a period of six months beginning from July 18.

The two posts regarding the change in legal drinking age in the U.S. have already got 10 million pageviews on Facebook, while several millions shared and liked the post on the social network during the last few days.

The post about the change in drinking age in Canada was posted more recently, but already got 40,000 "likes" on social media.