The proprietors of a satirical dating site culled info from 250,000 public Facebook profiles (including real names) to construct mock dating profiles in what they claim is an effort to expose the social networking giant’s dark side.

Wired reports Lovely Faces (don’t be surprised if its servers are down) thumbs its nose at Facebook by setting up fake pages for the people it snoops on. The site makes snarky snap judgments on users whose data it scoops up, applying such labels as “Smug Women” and “Easy Going Men.”

Wired quotes the site’s maestros explaining their cause:

“Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating — unfortunately, without the user’s control. But that’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in general. If we start to play with the concepts of identity theft and dating, we should be able to unveil how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be.”

Those who have seen “The Social Network” will recognize the prank as something similar to what Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg pulled off in his pre-Facebook Harvard days, culling data from school servers to create FaceMash.

Facebook’s director of policy communications says the mother ship is not pleased:

“Scraping people’s information violates our terms. We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’re investigating this site and will take appropriate action.”

‘Dating’ Site Imports 250,000 Facebook Profiles, Without Permission [Wired]

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