KEY POINTS:
Students are taking a high-tech approach to revenge on teachers - assuming their identities in fake online profiles and putting doctored photographs of them on the internet.
The modern trend - dubbed "worrying" this week by the secondary teachers' union - appears to have firmly taken hold in New Zealand this year.
It is an extension of the problem of teenagers cyber-bullying their peers and follows the trend of fake profiles created for celebrities and politicians.
The issue is particularly worrying because of the potential damage to individuals' reputations - and offending content is difficult to remove.
One senior high school teacher, who spoke to the Weekend Herald on condition of anonymity, told of the hurt of finding a faked page on networking website Bebo under his name and with his photograph, with commentary questioning his sexuality.
"Students have created some fairly negative sexual sort of stuff about which way I swing," he said.
"My reaction to that was 'shock horror', of course, this is pretty aggressive and unnecessary stuff and it's a pretty cheap shot."
It was the second incident of its type in quick succession at the school.
"This electronic process reaches the entire world," he said. "So the ramifications are more dramatic."
The teacher spoke to police and got the profile removed from Bebo but they did not track down who was responsible.
The teacher has since discovered an online photograph of himself, doctored to show him standing in a field of cannabis.
NetSafe executive director Martin Cocker said the internet safety group heard almost weekly of students assuming a teacher's identity in an online profile.
"If the students want to mock a teacher in front of the other students, then the logical place to do it is where all the other students are when they're online, which is the social networking sites," he said.
Mr Cocker said NetSafe advised schools how to react when the fake profiles were uncovered.
Robin Duff, president of the Post Primary Teachers Association, said the union planned to investigate the issue.
He said the best method of combating the problem was more education about the ramifications.
He became aware of it this year when a union member asked for advice.
Mr Duff said teachers needed to be positive and confident to front a class and that was harder if they felt their authority had been undermined.
FAKING IT
* Students fraudulently register on a social networking website in their teacher's name.
* They add photographs taken from the school's website or scanned from the school magazine, making it look more legitimate.
* They can then interact with other users and write comments online, which readers are likely to think are from the teacher.
