In a piece for The Christian Science Monitor, Evan Selinger discusses the newly released Crystal app, which aims to give users real-time insight into the recipients of their emails, determining the recipient’s online data trail and turning it into a detailed personality profile to help inform users how to better communicate with the recipient. That kind of predictive algorithm worries Selinger, who writes that “the little and seemingly harmless digital breadcrumbs that we’ve left here and there can be aggregated to form a portrait that’s too revealing and too accessible.” Such algorithms as the Crystal app threaten “privacy by obscurity,” Selinger adds.
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