Your Face on a Porn Star's Body?

Imagine if your headshot were lifted from Facebook and used on a foreign porn site. And imagine being told that the pic probably can’t be removed because American laws don’t always apply in other countries. Sounds pretty much like a nightmare, right? That’s exactly what happened to 17 girls at the Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Boston within the past week. No wonder McKenna Daniels, one of the victims, says, “The fact that someone could do that, I don’t understand why someone would do that to me.”

But the virtual world is like a box of chocolates to the predatory eye. Even as a blogger requesting a headshot, I’ve often been told, “Lift one off my Facebook page. Take any one you like,” which can be akin to saying, “Go into my bedroom and take any clothes you like.” Let’s face it, we can talk about privacy settings until we’re blue in the face, but while our condom-usage is better than ever and we don’t accept rides with strangers, we’re still OK with posting detailed information about our lives and livelihoods — then returning to our virtual home to find we’ve been robbed.

So how can we strengthen our boundaries?  I, for one, don’t see a magic fix. Perhaps we’ll just have to make the mistakes and learn, learn, learn. Of course, the plus-sides of the internet are huge — not least in terms of developing sexuality. With numerous websites offering savvy sex ed — not to mention the social support that social networking can bring, there are rewards aplenty.

Things are certainly changing fast, though … or maybe this just shows my age. I hail from an era when the pharmacist sneered if you bought condoms and you could only get porn by picking it off the shelf.

Kinda quaint, really, when you think of it.