God not another one!
Want to find yourself? Facebook will do it for you
Tool matches look-alikes and bruises some egos
Katie Daubs
Staff Reporter
Katie Daubs
Staff Reporter
Published: Monday, December 28, 2009 
Chris Mejaski (centre-left), Tim Inman (centre-right) and other pairs of Facebook look-alikes. FACEBOOK
In German folklore, a doppelganger is a shadowy forecaster of death.
In corporate America, it's a fun new social experiment.
In a marketing attempt to showcase its similarity to Coca-Cola, Coke Zero is asking Facebook users to sign up to find their look-alike. The Facebook application uses the same facial-recognition software that "governments and international security agencies use" – but instead of finding criminals, it says, "you'll be able to find a person that looks just like you."
How you use that information is "up to you," the site notes.
But a University of Toronto professor is far more worried about how the site uses your information.
Andrew Clement, who researches online privacy at U of T, couldn't bring himself to use the application.
"I'm not sure that it's harmless," he said. "Once you've allowed it, it looks like it's too late. There's no indication of your privacy rights, whether you can pull out if you don't like it."
Before the application finds a match, the user has to agree to let Coke Zero pull profile information, photos, friends' information and "other content" to work.
Clement says the database would be useful for someone skilful in identity theft because they'd be able to find a good match.
But Ryerson University student Chris Mejaski was willing to forgo his privacy to find his long lost twin. He began to worry when the application selected some particularly awful photos of him from his Facebook profile to find a match.
When the big reveal happened, Mejaski began to laugh.
"Oh lord," he said. "I'm wearing glasses so they brought up a guy wearing glasses."
The man, named Tim, was a 68 per cent match.
"There's a lot of other people I've seen in the real world that I bear closer resemblance to," he said.
Mejaski, who was "saddened" by the match, said his similarities to Tim include the fact that Tim has a forehead, wears glasses and has a similar frown.
"I don't think I'll be reaching out to Tim," he said. "I don't know what else we really have to discuss over Facebook."
Graeme Steel, another Ryerson student, was matched with Caleb from Boston, "a good-looking guy," he noted.
"He looks like Jack Black. It also looks like he's a lot bigger than me," he said.
Caleb, who had a similar smile and style of glasses, was a 57 per cent match. "He's got a full beard and you've got no facial hair," said a friend in the background.
Almost 200,000 people have registered to find their match, and the majority aren't ready to re-enact the plot of The Parent Trap, in which twin girls are reunited after being separated at birth and decided to switch places. The top match is, unsurprisingly, Coke with Coke Zero, followed by a group of convincing matches, although some are so good they raise suspicions that the person may have submitted a photo twice.
One reviewer named Whitney said her doppelganger was "way hotter" than she was, which "sucked" but was also "flattering." Another reviewer named Adrianne kept getting men in her matches. One man named Michael said his match had a "blocky" and much bigger face.
The application was released in October, but people couldn't find out their results until December, when the database had enough photos to go live.
Clement says all the matches on the Facebook application point to a flaw in larger databases. People do look like each other, which can create hassles if you have the misfortune of sharing facial features with a criminal.
"If one of your doubles comes afoul of the law, and they (government or police) use facial recognition software on your face, that other person is very likely to come up," he said. "It shows a match without it being a match. This is a very big problem for large-scale databases."
In German folklore, a doppelganger is a shadowy forecaster of death.
In corporate America, it's a fun new social experiment.
In a marketing attempt to showcase its similarity to Coca-Cola, Coke Zero is asking Facebook users to sign up to find their look-alike. The Facebook application uses the same facial-recognition software that "governments and international security agencies use" – but instead of finding criminals, it says, "you'll be able to find a person that looks just like you."
How you use that information is "up to you," the site notes.
But a University of Toronto professor is far more worried about how the site uses your information.
Andrew Clement, who researches online privacy at U of T, couldn't bring himself to use the application.
"I'm not sure that it's harmless," he said. "Once you've allowed it, it looks like it's too late. There's no indication of your privacy rights, whether you can pull out if you don't like it."
Before the application finds a match, the user has to agree to let Coke Zero pull profile information, photos, friends' information and "other content" to work.
Clement says the database would be useful for someone skilful in identity theft because they'd be able to find a good match.
But Ryerson University student Chris Mejaski was willing to forgo his privacy to find his long lost twin. He began to worry when the application selected some particularly awful photos of him from his Facebook profile to find a match.
When the big reveal happened, Mejaski began to laugh.
"Oh lord," he said. "I'm wearing glasses so they brought up a guy wearing glasses."
The man, named Tim, was a 68 per cent match.
"There's a lot of other people I've seen in the real world that I bear closer resemblance to," he said.
Mejaski, who was "saddened" by the match, said his similarities to Tim include the fact that Tim has a forehead, wears glasses and has a similar frown.
"I don't think I'll be reaching out to Tim," he said. "I don't know what else we really have to discuss over Facebook."
Graeme Steel, another Ryerson student, was matched with Caleb from Boston, "a good-looking guy," he noted.
"He looks like Jack Black. It also looks like he's a lot bigger than me," he said.
Caleb, who had a similar smile and style of glasses, was a 57 per cent match. "He's got a full beard and you've got no facial hair," said a friend in the background.
Almost 200,000 people have registered to find their match, and the majority aren't ready to re-enact the plot of The Parent Trap, in which twin girls are reunited after being separated at birth and decided to switch places. The top match is, unsurprisingly, Coke with Coke Zero, followed by a group of convincing matches, although some are so good they raise suspicions that the person may have submitted a photo twice.
One reviewer named Whitney said her doppelganger was "way hotter" than she was, which "sucked" but was also "flattering." Another reviewer named Adrianne kept getting men in her matches. One man named Michael said his match had a "blocky" and much bigger face.
The application was released in October, but people couldn't find out their results until December, when the database had enough photos to go live.
Clement says all the matches on the Facebook application point to a flaw in larger databases. People do look like each other, which can create hassles if you have the misfortune of sharing facial features with a criminal.
"If one of your doubles comes afoul of the law, and they (government or police) use facial recognition software on your face, that other person is very likely to come up," he said. "It shows a match without it being a match. This is a very big problem for large-scale databases."
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 1:30 PM
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