People in Russia are able to identify strangers on the street, connect with them over the Russian social network, Vkontakte, and see other photos of them thorough the app, FindFace.
Launched earlier this year, the app has had over 500 million downloads, and the developers said it will soon release an English version that is compatible with Facebook.
The app makes use of facial recognition technology, developed by N-Tech Lab, and is accurate 70% of the time. FindFace says its algorithm will be able to work with partial photos and photos taken in low light.
Russian photographer Yegor Tsvetkov did a project where he photographed strangers on the train and used FindFace to find out as much information about them as possible. The results culminated in a revealing exhibition, called Your Face is Big Data, where he juxtaposed the picture he sneaked of them in real life with their chosen Internet representation.
Beyond stalking
Although the concept of FindFace is unsettling, there are benefits to this type of technology.
The app's YouTube page has a series of videos where FindFace has been used to return a lost driver's licence, catch a thief, and track down old military friends.
Arthur Goldstuck, World Wide Worx MD, says: "Facial recognition software is exceptionally useful for law enforcement and prosecution of offenders after crimes or violent events have been captured on video or stills.
"It is used by many soccer stadiums in Europe to identify known troublemakers who have been banned from stadiums. It is used for airport security, and tracking of wanted people or those on watch-lists. The public perception is that intelligence authorities are not very good at using the technology, but then we only hear of the failures and tend not to have the successes trumpeted in the media."
FindFace is in talks with Russian authorities to combine the technology with Moscow's CCTV cameras, so known criminals can be easily identified.
ICT commentator Adrian Schofield says the app could be used by paramedics to help quickly identify accident victims or help people experiencing memory loss.
Time for a mask?
Goldstuck notes: "As with any advanced technology, there are as many negative uses as positive. The dark side of facial recognition technology ranges from stalking to persecution of political activists.
"It can be a gross violation of privacy," says Goldstuck.
Schofield says the app could be used to gather personal information about a stranger and perform identity theft, or it can be used for blackmail.
However, he does not see the identification of one's face as an invasion of privacy.
"It's what is done with that information subsequently that matters. It's a grey area that the EU is attempting to resolve - Facebook has to limit some of its features for that reason," says Schofield.
Goldstuck says, in the future, it will be almost impossible to prevent one's image from being found online.
"However, we will probably see laws passed in many countries making use of the technology to find people online. That said, image matching technology from Google and Microsoft is already widely used in their search engines, and represents a more long-winded way of doing the same thing.
"You can't stop it, but laws can be passed making it illegal to provide such functionality."
Schofield says it will not be an issue for most people. "For the rich and famous, they have long been the target of the paparazzi. For the criminals, another reason to wear a mask. For the curious, maybe we can find out if it is true that we each have a doppelganger out there.
"The next market opportunity will be an app that anonymises your face to prevent it being recognised!"
Goldstuck concludes: "If it can be shown that the benefits of the technology far outweigh privacy concerns, the same trade-off of benefit versus privacy that many of us have accepted in social media will apply in this area."
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