MIT's Gmail Visualization Tool

Remember Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker that exposed how phone & internet companies including the government are using our data to spy on us? Well, it appears that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab announced a new tool that uses your Gmail metadata to build a visual map of the web you've created with others. The tool, called Immersion, has been gaining national attention.

Immersion is a visualization of the social webs we create when we send and receive emails. In light of the uproar that Edward Snowden created, Immersion gives ordinary individuals a glimpse at how our email data and cell phone data can be used by government analysts to build a profile on us by visualizing the people we make the most contact with.

According to the tool, the more frequent email contacts are represented by a large bubble. The less frequent contact are represented by smaller bubbles. Bubbles that are connected with lines represent networks. Nevertheless, an analyst can quickly discern a target’s social affiliation.

Currently, Immersion is available as an online tool. Users can access it by going to: https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

Please note that you must have a gmail account in order to use the tool.