How to take back your online privacy

We need to wake up to how our personal information is being used online. Tech companies are delighted to fund free email and wonder apps so they can read your email, know what you eat, what exercise you like, and where you shop. The key thing to remember is that if you are not paying for it, then you are the product, writes Marjorie Brennan

Do you read the terms and conditions for online services or do you just tick the box? You probably see the term cookies pop up on your phone or laptop countless times a day but do you know what it means? Are you happy that services such as Google and Facebook harvest your information for advertising? Have you ever thought about how safe your information is in the ‘cloud’?

Data-protection consultant Daragh O’Brien says most people are not aware of what information online services such as Google have stored on them.