Cyberspying tool Immersion scans e-mails to build your profile
Hard on the heels of Edward Snowden's Prism exposure comes Immersion to extract your data
A powerful cybersnooping tool that can build an intimate personal profile of an e-mail user in seconds is in the spotlight after whistle-blower Edward Snowden's revelations about the US National Security Agency's international surveillance programme.
Immersion, developed by a trio of computing experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, uses the same techniques as the NSA's global Prism programme to extract metadata - literally data about data - behind users' accounts.
From a privacy perspective it is powerful because you can immediately learn about your social network or you can see other personal data
With access to e-mails - but without reading the messages or subject lines - it can see how a user's life has changed from who is sending and receiving, when messages are sent and how that defines the networks and connections of an individual.
It demonstrates the potential ramifications of national security agencies seeking the same information about an individual.
The project led by 33-year-old Cesar Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, was initially set up to explore a new way to display e-mails.
With the help of graduate students Daniel Smilkov and Deepak Jagdish, both 26, it eventually presented the team with an effective surveillance technique.
Smilkov said a side effect of focusing on e-mails was that it revealed much more intimate data and private information about users.