Garrett Haake

WUSA-TV, Washington

BAILEY'S CROSSROADS, Va. — A little-known independent candidate running for Congress in Virginia’s 8th District got a massive boost to his online name recognition on Monday for all the wrong reasons, after sharing a screenshot photo with pornographic website tabs left open.



Mike Webb, whose Facebook page describes him as a conservative Republican, and who lists the Bible as his favorite book, posted a series of screenshots about his search for a temporary job in nearby Alexandria, Va., around 11:30 a.m. Monday. Visitors to his Facebook page, which had only a few hundred followers at the time, quickly noted that the screenshot showed two porn websites open in tabs in the top left corner.

“What’s more embarrassing?” one Facebook user wrote on Webb’s page. “The porn tabs or the fact that you are using Yahoo as a search engine?”

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News websites The Daily Caller and Gawker quickly confirmed both tabs linked to pornographic videos.

More than six hours after the post began to go viral, Webb responded to several reporters via email and spoke on camera exclusively with WUSA-TV.

“What happened is actually kind of interesting. I initially got hit with a cyberattack on my (Federal Election Commission) data file and there was a lot of, I guess, speculation in terms of where we got it,” Webb said. “We took it to Best Buy and we found out we had 400 viruses on the computer.”

Webb said technicians at Best Buy told him the viruses likely came from porn sites, which he says he does not visit. Webb told WUSA he visited the porn sites seen open in his tabs to test their theory.

“I was trying to see what was the probability that someone running for office is going to run into that particular, that particular scenario,” Webb said. The result of his experiment? “It just doesn’t happen.”

Webb said he was aware the tabs were open when he posted the screenshot and has no plans to remove the post.

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“it was so small it was like anybody who is really looking that close is just out to get you anyway. But I was like I’ve got nothing to hide,” he told WUSA.

In a follow-up post Monday night, Webb quoted scripture and tried to laugh off the incident. He noted that his Facebook page was seen by some 200,000 people on Monday, and his followers grew by 25%.

“Perhaps, what does not kill you does make you stronger,” he concluded.

Follow Garrett Haake on Twitter: @GarrettHaake