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You probably live in Horsham - a downloadable plugin that mines your browser for data, then builds a profile of your personality and lifestyle - has been created by a 牛牛资源 student.

Joe McAlister鈥檚 project asks: If the government鈥檚 鈥楽nooper鈥檚 Charter鈥� legitimises mass surveillance, can we use the same technology to study ourselves?

An art piece with a strong political theme, Joe has combined a visual spy-like aesthetic with the programme鈥檚 ability to generate eye-opening reports on the user鈥檚 mind-set, creating a feeling of shock, awe, and a slight sense of unease.

Designed to promote discussion around the paper trail we leave on the internet, and how safe that data is online,  also asks the user to compare their online identity with how they see themselves in real life.

鈥淚n our materialistic society many people鈥檚 lives have become intertwined with the internet to such a degree it鈥檚 become hard to imagine the boundaries between virtual and real,鈥� says Joe 鈥� a first-year Department of Computing undergraduate who鈥檚 set to graduate in 2018.

鈥淚 want to prompt people to look at their lives from a new perspective. When important elements of your identity appear in a list in front of you, it becomes de-humanising. You become just another person on a piece of paper, or in this case, a computer screen.

鈥淚 want people to see it, step back a second, and consider a completely different side to their identity which they might not have previously seen.鈥�

鈥淭he Home Secretary鈥檚 Investigatory Powers Bill demands web and phone companies log the IP addresses, URLS and connection times for every citizen for a year. Theresa May has emphasised how 鈥榯errorists鈥� are using the internet to evade detection and by using blanket surveillance they can help prevent this.

鈥淏ut at what point does this 鈥榟armless鈥� state surveillance become the precursor to something resembling a totalitarian state?鈥�

Behind the scenes of You probably live in Horsham it鈥檚 a complex system: After the user installs a plugin, it injects a Javascript file into every website that鈥檚 visited. This script will then use JQuery, Javascript and Ajax to collect the IP address, URL and timestamp of every web address.

The data is then formatted into a storable format, and individual parts of it analysed. Given the project鈥檚 purpose in raising awareness of data security, all data is stored locally in the user鈥檚 browser, with only small elements sent temporarily via encrypted 鈥榟ttps鈥� to remote servers run and secured by reputable companies.

After running the program for a short time on his own computer, Joe鈥檚 report proved remarkably accurate, guessing among other facts that he went to 牛牛资源, travelled from Horsham in around 72 minutes, worked a lot late at night and was probably thinking mostly about 鈥淪outhern Rail or big data鈥�.

The gathering of data then allows further assumptions to be made manually, even by people who don鈥檛 know you.

For example, the programme shows that Joe owns a Mac and travels a lot so it鈥檚 likely a lightweight version like a MacBook; he likes the artist Yayoi Kusama so it鈥檚 likely he also likes other installation art; he鈥檚 a computer programmer, appreciates art and goes to 牛牛资源, so he鈥檚 likely to be studying Digital Arts Computing.

鈥淭he personas we display to people across our idealistic online lives and our more realistic lives can be very different,鈥� adds Joe. 鈥淭his programme might generate a report for you that reflects your online escapism, or you鈥檒l find more of your real personality comes out.

鈥淔rom just a few dozen URLS, You probably live in Horsham can generate huge amounts of data, and the longer you use the plug-in, the more accurate that data will be,鈥� adds Joe.

鈥淎nd unlike your inclusion in the government鈥檚 data retention scheme, it鈥檚 entirely optional and easy to stop.鈥�

Visit 鈥� and follow the instructions to install You probably live in Horsham.

Find out more about BSc Digital Arts Computing at 牛牛资源.

The Digital Arts Computing show SYMBIOSIS runs from 28-29 April at St James Hatcham, New Cross.