Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age

We've come a long way since the web was just a fun place to share cat gifs - now it's a place mostly dedicated to finding and selling your personal info. Here's what you need to know in this new era

On the internet, the adage goes, nobody knows you're a dog. That joke is only 15 years old, but seems as if it is from an entirely different era. Once upon a time the internet was associated with anonymity; today it is synonymous with surveillance. Not only do modern technology companies know full well you're not a dog (not even an extremely precocious poodle), they know whether you own a dog and what sort of dog it is. And, based on your preferred category of canine, they can go a long way to inferring - and influencing - your political views.

Just over a week ago, the Observer broke a story about how Facebook had failed to protect the personal information of tens of millions of its users. The revelations sparked a #DeleteFacebook movement and some people downloaded their Facebook data before removing themselves from the social network. During this process, many of these users were shocked to see just how much intel about them the internet behemoth had accumulated. If you use Facebook apps on Android, for example - and, even inadvertently, gave it permission - it seems the company has been collecting your call and text data for years.