This man's picture went around the world but for all the wrong reasons

This is a picture of twins Jeremy and Sean Telford celebrating their exam results alongside fellow twins Alistair and Lucy Simmonds.

You may have also seen this image attached to dozens of media reports about two long-lost siblings who apparently reunited after matching with each other on dating app Tinder.

While we're not sure about the veracity of that story (see below), we do know that it had nothing to do with the Telford and Simmonds twins.

"It's one of the most hilarious yet bizarre things I've ever experienced," Jeremy Telford, now a student at Sheffield University, tells i100.co.uk. "My brother sent it to me yesterday on Facebook, having been sent a link from Mic by his friend [the image on Mic has now been removed].

"I'm not so much worried that people will recognise me, it's just thinking that my photo is all over the world in a completely fabricated story that has nothing to do with me that is pretty weird," he said. "It also makes me think about how many of those stories are completely made up."

Both of them [Alistair and Lucy Simmonds] know about the story and have posted about it on their [Facebook] profiles. Pretty much all of our old school year knows by now, one of my friends has even started calling it Twindergate.

• Jeremy Telford

The picture was taken two years ago in the Chester Chronicle and and was reused on the Dutch dating comparison site Datingsitekiezen, where the story about the siblings meeting on Tinder originated. Several outlets picked the tale up and the image was later attached to reports about the siblings on sites including the Mirror.

An email from the author of the Datingsitekiezen story to Sean Telford explains: "I found the photo via Google and wanted to add the photo in to 'illustrate' the story."

The piece was about Erik de Vries, 24 and Josephine Egberts, 22, who were said to have been estranged since 1999 when their parents split up. Erik had moved to Belgium with his father and twin brother Maarten and Josephine remained in Holland with her mother. According to Datingsitekiezen, the pair met after Erik moved to Holland to study and matched with his sister on Tinder and soon realised they were related.

As for where the Telford twins are from? "Although I was born in The Hague I'm half American, half English and can't speak a word Dutch," Jeremy said. Right then.

Here's a picture of the Telford twins now that we hope won't end up on any more viral stories.

More: Sexy robots are duping people on Tinder at SXSW