gmail metadata

Meta data is a popular phrase these days with political institutions snooping and all.  Some people think that knowing 'meta data' isn't really a big deal and you can't know too much from that anyways.  This isn't really that true.  If you know meta data you can know a lot about a person, the groups they are a part of and whether there are any connections between them.  For example, here is an article by a sociologist showing that with simple 'meta data' the British could have found and isolated revolutionaries like Paul Revere (it is awkwardly told as if it was a British person during the Revolution...).

Anyways, using only meta data (to, from, time stamps...), here is a network cloud of my own gmail account (make your own!!).  Kind of interesting.

Sara is that grey node in the middle right that connects the blue network (our Bible study) and the rest of the grey one (mostly her family).  The massive blue one at the bottom is my brother... apparently we email/text/chat a lot.  Seems I have a fair number of disconnected networks and a ton of isolated nodes.  This means I have interacted with a lot of people that are not connected to one another.