Big Brother is watching you. You have been warned.

Aren’t those little ads on YouTube sooo annoying? You know, the ones where you can ‘skip ad in 1 minute’?

Have you ever watched one to the end?

Oh all right, maybe some of the more interesting ones, or the ads about products you’re thinking of purchasing.

Well, it seems that enough other people do too. So much so that now Instagram is getting in on the act, and they’ve been trialling them in Britain and Australia. You’ll get served ads for things you’ve been discussing – they’ve been doing it for years on facebook, after all.

Comments so far have been mixed: ‘Back off with this spam’ and ‘I’m not following you. Why are you on my feed?’ being fairly common.

I guess eventually they’ll become acceptable to enough people, until their ubiquity will breed complacency. Starbucks often gets over 100,000 likes! It’s as if people eventually adjust to the intrusion of their privacy – like with facebook.

What fools! Edward Snowden was right to alert us to this lack of privacy online.

We’re happy to accept those cute little 1-minute creative ads that we get to like and enjoy – even to welcome. But all your habits are being recorded by Big Brother. Algorithms ensure he knows your triggers. He even knows where you are – in real time.

In the wrong hands this information is explosive. How long will it be before Mark Zuckerberg or Kevin Systrom’s new bosses sell this info – your info – to the CIA, or MI5, or the highest bidder. ISIS? Far fetched now, maybe – but maybe not in a few years. And by then it’ll be too late!

You have been warned.