Twins from Chester have won a battle to have an image of themselves removed from websites all over the world after they were falsely linked to a story about estranged siblings unknowingly ‘flirting’ on dating site Tinder.

The photograph of Sean and Jeremy Telford first appeared in the Chester Chronicle in 2013 when the duo were at The King’s School to pick up their A Level results. The pair were pictured alongside fellow pupils and twins Lucy and Alistair Simmonds, of Willington, near Tarporley.

A Dutch journalist used the photograph - doctored to show the Telford twins on the left of the photo - with his story of a brother and sister reuniting after chatting on the dating website Tinder. The story claimed that Jeremy, now studying medicine at Sheffield University, was a 24-year-old Dutch man called Erik de Vries and Lucy, a 22-year-old Josephine Egberts who turned out to be his long-lost sister.

The story was picked up by news organisations across the world, accompanied by the photograph of the ‘reunited siblings’.

Five hours later

Sean, who is now reading natural sciences at Cambridge University, was first alerted to the photograph by a fellow student after spotting it on the wesbsite Mic.com.

He said: “My friend said: ‘This looks like you’ and I said: ‘It is!’”

“I was amazed and bemused how quickly the story had gone viral - within about five hours, an incredible speed, it was being used on websites all over the world.”

The story, and the photograph, was picked up by The Telegraph and The Mirror and other news organisations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia and India.

Sean emailed the journalist who had written the original story, Sjoerd Zwart, asking him to take down the article and apologise.

An apology

Sjoerd responded: “I understand your concerns regarding the article and regret placing the photo in the article. I found the photo via Google and wanted to add the photo in to ‘illustrate’ the story. I have deleted your photo from the article and I want to offer you my sincerest apologies.”

He also promised to contact the news channels to inform them of his mistake.

Sean said: “ The Mirror agreed to remove the story from their website and The Telegraph removed the photograph.

“Between us we have tried to contact as many other organisations as possible but I may just have to give up now!”

At the time of this article the photograph was still on the Kiss 92.5 FM hit music station website.