Crystal Knows is a stalking web/mail app that suppose to help you out with your online communication skills, how it does that is that it digs up information on requested people throughout the web, mainly through social media information they post, categorize them into personality types and attempts to give you the best method for approaching them, going as far as suggesting fixes to your emails as you write them. another layer is that you can answer personality questions on other people and it will aggregate this information with the information it has dug up through the web.
I had to take it up for a spin to see what it knows about me, and it surprised me to discover its relatively accurate (They did only promise 47% accuracy for my personal profile). it kinda freaked me out so i started questioning it seriously trying to come up with how it knows what it knows:
It doesn't know shit about me. Psychologically, i convinced myself that the results are relatively accurate simply because they had some superficial traits that with bit of self convincing i could relate to myself, not unlike horoscope readings.
However, it did reveal its searching methods because some of the superficial stuff source is rather obvious. for start: according to Crystal Knows, when approaching me, i prefer long conversations to get deep into the subject. i prefer to form personal relationship before getting into business. i am analytical and don't shoot answers right away, so you should be patient with me. i suppose to love spreadsheets (Which is a weird personality trait). i prefer innovation and trying new and exciting things over safety and security.
That spreadsheet trait gave away the source as it is such a bizarre observation, it couldn't come from any social media: I tend to mail myself all the Excell spreadsheets from my office to my personal email so i could work on them at home. it knows i open them and it knows i send them back to my office mail. it knows i also use Google Sheets, since i have it installed. So for this stupid app, I like spreadsheets and sending spreadsheets is a measured success for getting a reply from me.
The innovation part is probably because half of my bookmarks are for Technology, Futurology, Design and Science blogs/sites. it probably also read my browsing history and see that i visit Kickstarter and such.
The long conversation is probably because it detected i don't reply short e-mails (Which are mostly short email reminders from me or others) but do to long ones (Which are usually the relevant ones).
The thing that bother me most about this creepy app is that i never gave it permission to search my mails. in fact, it didn't know i was searching my self and when searching other people who never used that app, it still gave results based on evident mail searches. when it searches my Social presence its ok, i guess, since its information that i knew is going out to the public sphere when i posted it, but my mails are private and while i have a written bond between me and google that i provide them with my information and they provide me with a mail service and lots of ads, i never formed such a bond with Crystal Knows and i sure as hell never expected it to get public.
Go a head and see what and if Crystal actually knows about you.
https://www.crystalknows.com/(Signing up doesn't give them permission to anything as they already took that without your consent. just don't sign in with your linkedin account or install their extensions)
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Topic: Crystal Knows about you (Read 1663 times)