Facebook, the online social network beloved by college students, has suddenly become a feeding ground for the prowling advocates of DirtyDTown.com – a site dedicated to capturing Dallas inhabitants at their not-so-finest.

Pictures that SMU students have posted on their Facebook accounts have made their way to Dirty D Town, complete with scandalous captions beneath them.

One of the site creators, using the alias Lance Lohan, explains that the creators do not personally scan the contents of Facebook and MySpace for worthwhile photos. Rather, somewhere between 50 to 200 pictures are sent to them each day by Dirty D Town fans.

“We go through them and look for things that we can basically make fun of,” Lohan said. “We try to do it in a joking manner. Obviously some are more mean than others.”

Talk of the controversial site has resonated throughout campus over the past two weeks, prompting many students to question their online privacy.

Sororities and fraternities have reacted by telling members to use the privacy settings available on Facebook to block people who would take pictures and submit them to the site.

An e-mail sent to the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority asked its members not to friend or de-friend an individual named Lindsey Moore.

“She takes your pics and puts them online or gives them to the people at www.dirtydtown.com,” the e-mail said.

An e-mail sent to members of Pi Beta Phi detailed how one member was befriended by a woman named Ashley West. A few weeks later West sent the member a message saying she was new to SMU and she thought she had seen the member on DirtyDTown.com. The member wasn’t on the Web site, but she immediately defriended West and decided to warn everyone else in Pi Phi.

“This potentially could be awful for you and for Pi Phi,” the email said.

Individuals who have found themselves to be victims are angry and seeking retribution.

“They’re embarrassed, and interested in taking action,” senior Laura Ann Elpers said. “They just don’t know how.”

Upon first viewing the site, Elpers thought the pictures were taken by the site creators at local hotspots.

“I didn’t think much of it the first time I saw it because I didn’t recognize anyone,” she said. “As soon as I realized they were people from the SMU community and there were pictures assumingly taken from someone’s personal picture collections, I was appalled.”

The pictures, however, are not the only thing SMU students are offended by. The photos’ captions have caused controversy as well.

“The things said in the captions are not acceptable to say to any human being, let alone to plaster on a Web site,” Elpers said.

The creators of Dirty D Town are fearing no legal consequences.

“A lot of girls and guys threaten us with legal action, but we have attorneys, we know our boundaries and we know what we’re allowed to do,” Lohan said.

Dirty D Town began as a joke between Lohan and his friends about the Dallas social scene. On the site’s first day, with only 20 pictures, there were more than 300 visitors.

As the site’s content became more controversial, the amount of visitors increased.

“We started getting a lot more complaints, but it goes with the territory,” Lohan said.

The site creators are willing to take certain pictures down if people make valid arguments for their removal. Lohan said the group has already taken many pictures down by request.

The Dirty D Town creators stress that the site is just for fun. They also wish to warn people that anything posted on Facebook is public domain.

SMU digital journalism professor Rick Stevens advises that “you can minimize the threat of having your pictures taken by making sure the only people in your online circle are people you trust.”

But even then, Stevens warns that students’ photos are not entirely restricted.

“Nothing you put on Facebook is private,” Stevens said.

Other SMU professors warn students of the dangers of posting private material in public domain.

“This is not an inside baseball parlor game; once information is online you lose control of it,” SMU political science professor Joe Kobylka said. “What may seem funky and cool at one time could be an enormous embarrassment at another.”