A PHOTOGRAPH of a Bolton teacher has gone viral — after she uploaded the picture to Facebook to teach her pupils about internet safety.

This picture of Sammy Roocroft has been shared 20,000, had another 20,000 comments and received 15,000 'likes' since it was posted online last week.

The years five and six teacher at Markland Hill Primary School in Heaton got her class to take the snap last Monday.

On it, she held a piece of paper, which said: "This is a 'private' Snapchat pic. Please share, like and comment where you are."

The image has since been seen by internet users around the globe — with people commenting from countries such as Australia, Denmark, USA and Canada.

Miss Roocroft said: "We had some issues in class where children were sharing a photo on social media but they didn't understand how easy it is for a so-called private photo of someone to be sent around on social media sites like Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.

"I explained to them that even if it is on Snapchat, where the photo is deleted after a period of time, the recipient can screenshot the picture, alter it and resend it to their friends.

"I did a survey to see who had access to these social media pages — and I was surprised that some of them did despite the legal age limit being 13.

"It's Safer Internet Day soon so I decided to do something to coincide with that, so got the children to take a photo of me holding up the paper before posting it online.

"I never thought it would go as far as it has."

Miss Roocroft has also had internet trolls alter her image and re-post it.

She said: "I have had people from Japan and Australia changing the photo and writing a different message or drawing horns on my head and re-posting it, which just shows an innocent image can lead to awful trolling.

"The children are not entirely aware of all the dangers online but I hope this will make them think twice about giving out too much information."