It's every millennial’s worst nightmare - but if you didn't close down your old Myspace account from the 2000s, then there’s a good chance your old pictures are still out there. Tom Anderson, better known as"Tom from Myspace," transformed the social media landscape in the early 2000s after co-founding the social media platform with Chris DeWolfe and Jon Hart more than 23 years ago.

It became thefirst social network to reach a global audience,and boasted more than 300 million registered users at its peak in 2007. When creating a Myspace profile, users were automatically "connected" with Tom, who became their first friend on their contacts list.

However, there are many Gen Z and Gen Alpha users who have been using social media for most of their lives but have no idea what Myspace actually is. It prompted one Reddit user to ask: "Can someone please describe to me how MySpace was? I never used MySpace myself, but those who did often speak about it with a strong sense of nostalgia.

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"Most of the conversations around the platform are positive, with criticism mainly focused on its decline in later years. Did you use MySpace? How did you like it? Why did you like it? Why did it fail? Would you use MySpace in 2026?"

Much to some millennials’ horror, this simple question sparked a chain of events, with many now realising their profiles are still visible, alongside their profile pictures and friends lists.

To track down your old Myspace profile and see what's still visible to the public, all you need to do is type your old username into a search engine with the word "Myspace". Alternatively, you could try searching your name with the word "Myspace".

If this doesn't work, you can open Myspace directly and type either your old username or your name into its search bar. Others have been using the Wayback Machinewebsite - an internet archive - to access their accounts further, allowing some to view their profiles when they were most active in the 2000s.

For those who simply abandoned their accounts without closing them down or deleting content, your profile picture might still be visible. However, this is not the case for everyone, as some files have been lost on the platform over time.

Again, for those with public profiles, you'll likely see your old friends list and will still be able to access your friends’ accounts and view their profile pictures and connections. Commenting on the Reddit post, one user shared how they've been using the Wayback Machine to reminisce about their younger years on the platform.

They said: "Go to https://web.archive.org/ and input myspace.com/yourMySpacename, and if it’s there, it’ll come up with a scrollable collection of years. Click on the year you want and select one of the blue dots, then click on the time to go to the link to the page as captured at that time."

Speaking about how the platform used to work, another user added: "It was like Facebook, but not so lame. You could customise everything about your profile with just a little HTML. This meant a lot of profiles were much more unique, with animated GIFs and music playing and stuff. You also actually went to people's profiles to see what they posted."

Sharing their overall thoughts, a third user said: "MySpace was okay, but it also foreshadowed some of the scary things about social media. We used it in high school, and there was this feature where you picked a 'top six' or 'top five' friends to be featured on your profile.

"This became really hard and political because you wanted to be in someone’s top friends and then pick people to be in yours. Lots of hurt feelings over who was in first position, second, etc.

"Other than that, MySpace was chiller than the current internet. It felt more 'owned' as an individual space than social media today.

"Like a little corner of the internet you could curate to express your personality. It felt more like a creative journal or blog, where you were expressing your creativity instead of accomplishments, luxury, or bragging.

"It reminds me of Neopets too in terms of vibe… what colour was your page? What music did you pick? It was self-expression, not marketing or bragging, and it was very individual. Music was big on MySpace and was part of the self-expression thing."