Hacked Identity

I think Facebook is the greatest invention of the 21st century. It’s an especially useful tool for journalists trying to track down sources.

But imagine my surprise recently when I looked at my Facebook page to find that someone had hacked my account and posted a crude video purportedly from me onto the wall of my 225 friends. There, beside my highlighted name and my smiling picture, was a video of a baby on a toilet seat, complete with a vulgar LMAO tagline. An accompanying text told my friends: “HAHA you have to watch this baby is so cute and funny be ready to laugh.”

Of course some people knew it wasn’t me because even in social networking I won’t write a run-on sentence without punctuation. All I learned is that someone in Arlington Heights, Ill., accessed my account and for whatever reason posted the offending message in my name. I erased it from my wall immediately and put up another post explaining that I really didn’t write such a message.

Not until a week later did I comprehend that I have to go onto the Facebook accounts of all 225 friends and individually remove the post as well for it to disappear from the pages of all my friends. Some of the savvy younger types already had removed it. Seven days later I embarrassingly found my coarse content still on the pages of ministry leaders, relatives and dear elderly women.

The whole experience mortified me. I’ve changed my password to something I can’t even remember in hopes that it won’t happen again. I trust most friends know me better than to think I find such rude imagery funny. Of course it could have been worse. At least I don’t have 5,000 Facebook friends.