Rebecca Javeleau Accidentally Invited Thousands to Her 15th Party

Rebecca Javeleau failed to make her birthday party invitation private.

ByABC News
September 20, 2010, 11:24 AM

Sept. 20, 2010 — -- A British teen intending to invite a few close friends to her 15th birthday party next month accidentally attracted tens of thousands of would-be attendees after failing to mark the event "private" on Facebook.

Rebecca Javeleau sent the invitation using the social networking site early last week and had meant to include 15 of her friends, a number on which she and her mother had agreed. But within hours, the number of attendees began to grow, eventually reaching 21,000 as word caught on about the open party.

So police in the small town of Hertfordshire, located 30 miles north of London, say they're prepared to provide security on the day of the party, Oct. 7, which has since been cancelled.

"We hope that it will die down before then," Sgt. Lewis Ducket of the Hertfordshire Police Department said. "But we've put in place a plan for high police visibility at major transport routes and in local spots.

"[The party was to be held] in a block of flats that wouldn't accommodate more than 10 people, let alone 10,000," he said.

Messages left for Rebecca weren't immediately returned but her mother, Tracey Livesey, told the Telegraph newspaper that her daughter has experienced the consequences of her online error.

"She did not realize that she was creating a public event and should have done," Livesey told the newspaper. "She is going to have to change her mobile phone SIM card because of the number of calls she has been getting about it.

"Rebecca did not understand the privacy settings and she has lost her Internet as a result of that. I've taken away her computer so she won't make that mistake again," she said.