With more than a million downloads in just two weeks, the Elyze application is a hit with young people. The principle is simple, all you have to do is "
swipe
" the candidates' proposals to the right or to the left for the algorithm to determine which one "
matches
" with the user. The goal is to avoid the abstention of 18-30 year olds in the next presidential election. The application created by two students, Grégoire Cazcarra and François Mari, is intended to be "
free, non-partisan and without advertising
".
But since last week, Elyze has been under fire from critics, especially on Twitter.
In question ?
Computer flaws, mostly resolved, assure its creators.
It all starts with a tweet from Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The candidate of France Insoumise reports that despite the approval of all the proposals, it is Emmanuel Macron, Anne Hidalgo and Yannick Jadot who respectively finish first, second and third in the ranking.
Flaws discovered “
out of curiosity
”
Mathis Hammel, cybersecurity expert, then became interested in the platform's computer code, "out
of simple curiosity
". In case of equality of candidates, he observes that the algorithm displays the original order in which the names were entered by the developers, thus creating an artificial podium. "
From now on, it is the alphabetical order that prevails when a tie is detected between several candidates
", indicates Grégoire Cazcarra.
Another flaw allowed Mathis Hammel to modify one of the proposals affiliated with Emmanuel Macron. He erased one to replace it with "
Fire Jean Castex and appoint Mathis Hammel in his place
". If he only left it for a few minutes, the expert worried about the “
risk of being able to manipulate the electoral programs
”. He immediately contacted the developers of the application who solved the problem overnight.
“
I could have found this fault much faster if the code had been published in open source
”, that is to say publicly, mentions Mathis Hammel.
He adds that “
this allows a certain algorithmic transparency and reinforces the confidence of users
”.
The two co-founders specify that “
their team is actively working on it to share it as quickly as
possible”.
Concerns over the resale of data
In addition to these flaws, many concerns turn to the use of user data. From the launch of Elyze, they are invited to indicate their sex, their date of birth, their postal code, but also the name of the candidate for whom they voted in 2017 and their intention to vote for 2022. Mathis Hammel points to a study , where the American expert Latanya Sweeney noted in 1998 that 87% of the American population could be identified via “
three indirect identifiers
” which are gender, date of birth and postal code. For his part, Grégoire Cazcarra points out that "
this information is optional and that Elyze works the same way with or without this data
".
Some also wonder about a possible resale of usage data to third parties.
This is the case of François Malaussena, political commentator on Twitch, who underlines the “
risk that two unsupervised strangers have in their hands one of the probably most powerful databases in French political history.
That parties would pay dearly to have.
»
Read alsoSmartphone, battery level or chat duration… WhatsApp clarifies its collection of personal data
Once again, Grégoire Cazcarra defends himself: “
the
data will never be communicated to a campaign team, a political party or a partisan formation”.
But he does not exclude that they can be used to
“create reports on the political opinion of young people via think tanks or polling institutes. If we do, we will inform users beforehand and in a transparent way
”.
In order to avoid new controversies, the Elyze team has set up an email address to report any "
criticism, remark or suggestion
", entitled salut@elyze.co.
The co-founders also point out that they are going to approach the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (CNIL) and that they are consulting specialized lawyers to comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (RGPD).