Data Dossier was designed as an exploration to Data Aeternum (https://data-aeternum.com/), an interactive guide to teach people about data privacy and empower them to reduce their data footprint. While researching and testing ideas for what would work best for the guide, I discovered that people seldom understood what data really was. After all, when do we ever interact with data, much less see data? What is data anyway? And what kind of data is being collected about us?

What started as these questions, quickly became an exercise in bringing this data into the physical world. Data Dossier, is a 40 page long collection of my own personal data. Who I am, through the lens of the digital platforms I use. My personality summarized in keywords and data points. This FBI-like profiling document, takes its visual cues from old command-line terminals and ASCII environments, which is meant to feel cold, confusing, and alienating.

The dossier contains a trove of data: Identity data (personal info, demographics, location data), Quantitative Data (transactions, communications, social activity, audio request clips), Descriptive Data (marital status, lifestyle, employment, interests), and Qualitative Data (attitudinal info, opinions and motivations). All this information might not seem like much at a first glance, but upon review, quickly starts to paint a picture of who we are, or at least who we are through the eyes of these platforms. This data then dictates what content we are fed, what kinds of ads we're hammered with, and what kinds of opinions we are allowed to form.

While this dossier is about me, it ultimately pushes the reader to question: "What do they have on me?". Hopefully the following retrospection becomes a catalyst for learning about data privacy, reducing their data footprint and teaching others while advocating for better data privacy laws.