Firefox Girl — the story of Alexandra Ansgar
Photoshopped picture of the girl in a Firefox t-shirt I added to one of my postings got a warm welcome (not as warm as Ubuntu Girl, mind you!), so I decided to hit on an idea and seek for more information. What’s her name, where is she from, and — before anything else — what on Earth does she have to do with the Firefox browser?
Alexandra Ansgar, the Firefox Girl
Here’s what I found so far – photo leaked for the first time at some Portuguese blog, and after that, it was posted at several tech blogs all at once on various websites around the world (below you can see my translation of its Portuguese description). It looks like the fake information about “Scandinavian top model Alexandra Ansgar” wasn’t published by original author of the fake photo but much later, in a story made-up by Gadgetizer.
I can write a text that probably would be a summary of 5000 words of the advantages in moving for Firefox and about all disadvantages and terrible dangers behind MS Internet Explorer… But the following image will be much more successful, I guess.
After that, Museum of Hoaxes posted a more detailed story about Firefox girl, and that’s where I found that blonde girl is also known as Emy18. I also got a couple of links — unfortunately, due the lack of her true name and no white t-shirt session pictures it wasn’t much helpful for further Firefox Girl investigation. Finally, thanks to folks posting random things on some internet forum I got to know that pretty much all you need to do is to perform a Google search for “Francesca Lee”.
The Firefox Girl, before the Photoshop makeover
Her name is Francesca Lee, she is based on the south coast of the United Kingdom and has been modeling for about 1,5 year. She started modeling for a friend who was an amateur photographer; she really enjoyed it and things went from there.
Update #1: First of all, thanks for the GREAT feedback you have been sending in by emails and comments added to this post. Special thanks to DailyTech readers who refer to my writings every once in a while, always when Firefox news with a Firefox Girl thumbnail reaches the DailyTech frontpage. That’s very kind of you, thank you.
Update #2: Alrighty then. After almost two years, we finally got some feedback from Francesca. Not from Francesca, from Emy. I mean, from Haley. Well, okay — just see for yourself! She added a comment to the entry (back then, when the site actually was a Wordpress blog with comments on it) and shared few pictures, clearly proving that she’s the girl she claims she is.
Im not Francesca Lee. For a start she doesn’t have my face shape or the scar above my right eye that I got on my friends parents coffee table when I was a kid.
My name is Haley Emy Bickers. I grew up in UK. Moved to LA at 15. Now live in Ontario. Emy was my grandmothers name and is my middle name.
I used to sing and the firefox picture was created along with other mock ups to take to sponsorship meetings. I posted them on a blog page i had at the time and someone took them from there and spread the firefox rumour.
Here’s some of the mock ups:
And this is what I looked like at 15:
And this is me now:
Update #3: I slightly modified the entry, and I don’t plan any further updates regarding the hoax unless our coincidental Firefox mascot asks me to do so. Taking into account she’s a photo model enjoying your attention — seems rather unlikely.
Update #4: Did I say no more updates? Well, I just got one another email regarding the story — this time it’s from David. He was kind enough to add that if you want to check out more of her model work, she also goes by the name of Emelie Blid.
Firefox Girl fan club this way → → →
