Using E-Mail Data to Connect the Dots of Your Life

What is e-mail metadata anyway?

It’s information about the people you’re sending e-mails to and receiving e-mails from, and the times that the messages were sent — as opposed to the contents of the messages. It’s the digital equivalent of a postal service worker looking at your mail envelope instead of opening it up and reading what’s inside. That sounds harmless, but it turns out your e-mail metadata can be used to connect the dots of your life story. I learned this from participating in Immersion, a project by M.I.T.’s Media Laborator. Immersion is a tool that mines your e-mail metadata and automatically stitches it all together into an interactive graphic. The result is a creepy spider web showing all the people you’ve corresponded with, how they know each other, and who your closest friends and professional partners are. In an Immersion chart, each person is represented by dots. The more you’ve e-mailed with the person, the bigger the dot gets.