In the last two decades of the twentieth century, luck egalitarianism became the dominant current in Anglo-Saxon academic egalitarianism. Building on the influence of proposals such as Dworkin’s (‘What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 10(4), pp. 283–345, 1981), egalitarians began to attribute an ever-growing importance to the idea that we should redistribute welfare, capabilities, or resources—or a combination of those—so that individuals’ life prospects are only affected by the consequences of their own responsible choices and, under no circumstances, by morally arbitrary contingencies like their social origin or their natural talent. The core of the egalitarian project merged with that idea up to the point that philosophers like Cohen (‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics, 99(4), pp. 906–904, 1989) argued that “the primary egalitarian impulse is to extinguish the influence on distribution of both exploitation and brute luck”. Implementing luck egalitarianism in real-world societies demands, first, theoretical foundations establishing that some circumstances belong to the realm of individual choice and others to the realm of luck (Olsaretti, ‘Responsibility and the Consequences of Choice’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, CIX(2), pp. 165–188. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2009.00263.x , 2009; Stemplowska, ‘Making Justice Sensitive to Responsibility’, Political Studies, 57(2), pp. 237–259, 2009), so that institutions can develop policies that tailor public investment to the unequal opportunities available for each population sector as a result of unchosen contingencies (see Roemer, ‘Equality of opportunity: A progress report’, Social Choice and Welfare, 19(2), pp. 455–471, 2002). But, second, it also demands technical devices that allow institutions to discern the likelihood of an outcome arising from accidental circumstances more precisely. In this regard, algorithms could help authorities determine more exactly when, for instance, someone’s genetic inheritance makes it more difficult for her to find a job no matter how hard she tries. In this regard, and relying on different variables about each individual’s skills, algorithms could calculate the chances that someone achieves a certain position and identify those subjects that require help through public resources, thus taking us closer to a more perfect luck egalitarianism in which public investment is truly channelled towards the least fortunate. Nevertheless, a perfect luck egalitarianism would also deploy undesirable features. Firstly, effective algorithms should rely on detailed information about aspects such as our physical capacity or our intelligence; a kind of information that most of us would desire to keep private and that, in such scenario, would be in the hands of social institutions (Wolff, ‘Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos’, Philosophy & Pûblic Affairs, 27(2), pp. 97–122, 1998). Secondly, using algorithms to classify individuals according to their capabilities would give rise to status hierarchies (Anderson, ‘What is the Point of Equality?’, Ethics, 109(2), pp. 287–337, 1999) that could undermine social respect towards those identified as less fortunate in the natural lottery. Through luck egalitarianism’s example, our intention is to reflect on the limits of the use of algorithms and on whether it is desirable to apply them in terms that allow authorities to classify citizens relying on intimate information. Algorithms can help optimise the distribution of public resources but, at the same time, their use can prompt undesired hazards regarding privacy, equal respect, and discrimination. As a consequence, we should inquire whether the potential that these new technologies can enclose justifies sacrificing fundamental values such as privacy or equal respect.