Vandalized

If you received an obscene message today from my Myspace account, please ignore it. Here’s what happened.

The internet in my apartment wasn’t working this morning, so I walked over to campus and logged into Myspace using one of the terminals in the library lobby. A few hours later I came back and checked my email, and found a message from one of my friends asking, “Why did you leave the comment ‘Fagman’ on my page? And why did you change your profile name to ‘David Barr Kirtley — Fiction Homosexual’?” I was like, oh crap. I logged into Myspace to find that my profile had been vandalized and several obscene messages had been sent from my account. I realized that you really have to sign out of Myspace. Closing the window isn’t enough. (The next person to open a window and go to Myspace will be logged in as you.) I changed my password, fixed everything, and tried to do damage control.

Some time later, I went back to the terminal I was at this morning and found a gang of the local juvenile delinquent skater kids clustered around it … browsing Myspace. So I’m sure it was them. I talked to the people at the library, but they said that unless I had solid proof there was nothing they could do about it. Those gang kids all have rap sheets full of grand theft auto and attempted rape, so I guess it’s no surprise that nobody here seems all that motivated to bust them for electronic vandalism, but it still really sucks.

Anyway, the lesson for the day is: always make sure to sign out of Myspace when using a public computer.

And BTW, is there any way in Myspace to see whose pages you’ve recently commented on?