A couple of artists have created a fake 'dating site' by scraping 250,000 Facebook profiles without Facebook's permission. Lovely-faces.com is your source for gawking at strangers who haven't adjusted their Facebook privacy settings!

Lovely-faces.com claims to be a "dating agency" but it's not, really. It's a database of names and profile pictures scraped from publicly-accessible Facebook profiles; the pictures have been analyzed and grouped into various "characters" you can use to filter your search for a mate: "easy-going," "funny," etc. There's no sign up, and the only way you can arrange a date is by clicking through to the unsuspecting person's actual Facebook profile and messaging them. And good luck with that! (Facebook is pissed: "We're investigating this site and will take appropriate action," a spokesman told Wired.)

Instead, Lovely-faces is an project by two Italian artists, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovic, meant to illustrate "how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be," according to their artists' statement. Also, to illustrate how creepy an art project can be.

Update: Lovely-faces.com appears to be down. Here's what your profile would look like if site happened to scrape your Facebook page:

[Wired]