They're always listening...

We are Facebook's asset. Why is that a surprise to everyone?

Unless you're in a spacesuit sat in a Tesla Roadster currently on an elliptical orbit around the sun, going where no electric car has gone before, you're probably bored of hearing the words Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and Personal Data by now.

For the past few weeks you cannot fail to have read that your data might have been stolen and used to manipulate the results of the American election and this week you may well have watched as Mark Zuckerberg sat in front of congress, sometimes squirming under the scrutiny of the panel as they quizzed him on use of personal data, and sometimes smiling a little to himself as he teased the panel on not really understanding how being online works.

One realisation that has dawned on people over the past days is that we, the Facebook user, are Facebook's assets. We are their currency. On the sign in screen it proudly states that Facebook Is Free And Always Will Be, and we love that we don't have to pay for the service, blindly accepting the terms and conditions that, buried in the mound of legalise, basically gives Facebook permission to learn all about us and then provide that data to third parties.

And I constantly find myself shocked that people were not aware that Facebook views us as currency. They make their money through selling advertising space to commercial entities, and then allowing those entities to target a specific audience.

Here's the shocker: Facebook are not the only ones doing this.

Facebook didn't pioneer this. It began long before the platform launched to the public in 2007. Google have been doing it for years. And Apple. And Sky. And Microsoft. But the methods of data collection and observation have expanded and improved and been finessed over the years as advertisers have realised how valuable this knowledge is.

And we, the consumer, actually desire it. In a perverse manner, we want them to know this about us because then our digital experience is tailored to us. I don't want to go online and see an advert for net curtains, but I do want to go online and read articles about technology and cars.

Google and Facebook know this about me and thus my online experience is tailored to my needs and desires, with the odd net curtain ad thrown in for good measure - testing the water just in case I really am interested in something different than Tesla. Sky and Netflix know what I like to watch and thus tell me about programmes that are of interest to me.

It goes beyond this, too. My phone always knows where I am and shows me places that I might be interested in. My Google Home assistants (there are four of them around our house) can recognise the four different voices in our house and provide tailored answers to that individual based on what Google knows we each like. If I say "Okay Google, play the radio", BBC Radio 2 comes on throughout the whole house. If my 18 year old says "Okay Google, play the radio", us oldies leave because the cacophony is deafening.

My phone is always listening, displaying what music it can hear playing in the background - a gimmick, sure, but hugely useful when Popmaster is on the radio, and a clear indicator that those mics aren't just listening for the trigger words "Hey Google..."

If we want this technology to work for us, we need to let it do this and it needs to learn about us.

As an advertiser, though, Facebook does not actually give me your personal data. I am not able to go online and target you by name, but it does allow me to create an advert that will be shown to a 46 year old male living in the CB7 post code area, who is interested in Ferraris and Beer. As an advertiser, this is gold - I can target specific ads to appear in front of a chosen demographic and this means that I can control my advertising budget and you the consumer see a relevant advert. I can say to Google or Facebook, show this advert in April to everybody who's birthday is in May but the crucial part is this: I don't know it's you I'm showing it to. I just know that the people who see it should be interested in it.

As a consumer, I love this. When I wake up in the morning my Google Assistant can tell me what's in my diary, what time I have to leave by to get to the office on time, remind me to pick up milk on the way home, and when I go online see an advert for a film that I really want to see; not the one my wife really wants to see. She sees that ad...

Where the system lets itself down is with third party apps that crave our information too and, usually unwittingly, we then give those apps permission to know all about us even though they don't need to.

This is where we, the consumer, come in. Facebook gives us the option to not let these apps see all this information but, hand on heart, tell me: how many of you have ever pushed the Edit button when you log in to a new app for the first time?

See this screen shot: it's for a lip syncing sing along music app. Fun, if you're in to that kind of thing, but why does it need to know my date of birth, or have access to 210 of my friends who's privacy settings aren't set high enough?

I suspect very few really dig in to this. We blindly push the Continue button because we want to answer the quiz about how many lines in a Star Wars movie we can recite. And there we go: a bit of fun for us, some nerdy scores to share on our Facebook timeline, and the next Cambridge Analytica just learned all about us and how to influence us in the next General Election...

Somebody once asked me to describe a Firewall in its simplest terms and I answered by saying to think of it as a condom: it keeps you safe while you have fun and stops the bad stuff getting in or out... As I'm always telling my children: the only way to stay safe is to keep their trousers on; the only way to stay 100% safe online is to not go online.

We are in control of our own personal safety when we are online and companies like Facebook and Google do give us the power to control what data is given out and what isn't. As with anything, you can still have fun online and stay safe. You do not need to #DeleteFacebook, you just need to push the Edit This button first and check you're happy with what info is going out, and uncheck the ones you don't want them to know.

If you're really concerned about your privacy and what these companies can do, log in to your Facebook account and your Google account and go and check your privacy and security settings. Look at the third party apps that are using your data and disconnect the ones you are concerned about. In Google's Chrome Browser go to your settings and tell it not to allow people to track your movements. Or, better still, just use Incognito mode for sites you'd rather weren't stored by your computer.

You are in control of your data. Nobody else.

Because Facebook* Isn't Free - it's paid for by what they know about you. But I don't think that's a bad thing, as long as the data is used responsibly.

*and Google, and Apple, and Netflix, and Sky, and Amazon, and Microsoft and ......