If you visited the Royal College of Art over the weekend, you may have been stalked by a seemingly cute filing cabinet with a mind of its own. Part of a final year MA project in Information Design Experience by Jaap de Maat – titled it I Know What You Did Last Summer, the filing cabinet is an apposite representation of the times we live in. A symbol of the dangers of data collection.

Our actions online are not only surveyed and collected by third parties, they’re also stored forever. As a response to the apathy many of us feel, de Maat’s clunky cabinet serves as a physical reminder to be aware of what we share online. Kitted out with a modified electric wheelchair, a motor, Arduino board, distance sensors and a webcam, it’s a fitting piece of design given recent revelations of spying by the NSA and abuse of collected data.

As we’ve seen with the Jammer Coat and x.pose, privacy in a high-tech world is fast becoming a major concern. With projects like this putting privacy ahead of everything else, products sharing this viewpoint are likely to become more common.