For example, my correspondence with my girlfriend, Anita, put her right at the center of my Immersion profile. She appears as a big blue circle. By sorting our emails by month and year, Hidalgo could see that we met four years ago. He could see that things started out slowly and as we became closer, messages flew back and forth at a faster rate. “It was a little bit timid in the beginning, and then the relationship intensified,” Hidalgo said with a wink.

A look at my correspondence with my son showed rather one-sided exchanges that should be familiar to any parent. “For every five emails that you send, he gives you two back,” Hidalgo said. Again, a very accurate reading of a father’s efforts to stay in touch with a wonderful son who is not the best correspondent. Hidalgo could see all that, based on just a few hundred emails…

Hidalgo also notes that even without identifying information attached to these communications, the patterns he sees in metadata are unique. Few people have the exact same communications pattern with my girlfriend, my son, and with my close friends. So that information could potentially be used to identify me.