Is Your Face on MySpace?

Posted on April 25, 2006

Today's fear factor story comes from PJStar.com. They are reporting the news that Jamie Dinkins, a junior high school teacher, discovered an image of herself on MySpace despite the fact that she did not have a MySpace account. The photo was part of a fake MySpace profile that had been created to ridicule the teacher.

"The day I found out about it, I was pretty much devastated," says Jamie Dinkins, who teaches junior high school in Pekin.
Her profile had been posted on MySpace.com, a Web site that links students and young people through photos and personal information. Along with Facebook.com, the popularity of MySpace has exploded over the past couple of years. But Jamie hadn't heard of it until she was confronted with her own face next to the bright comment "I should be fired!"
According to the fake profile with her real picture, Jamie is a 99-year-old female who likes "smokin . . . drinkin, teachin," among more unprintable pastimes. She enjoys hardcore music, "horrible" chick flicks, "Grey's Anatomy" and "anything with sex and drugs."

The good news here is that MySpace responded immediately to an email from the school's principal and terminated the fake profile of the teacher. Teachers and professors are not the only people that could find their photograph on MySpace. Anyone could upload your picture to MySpace, Facebook or any one of the other social networks. However, teachers may be the most likely to suffer from this type of cruel prank because they face MySpace and Facebook users on a regular basis.