The Internet can be used as a surveillance tool. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time from all the different websites we use on a daily basis. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to especially websites with their advertisements(AdSense), Facebook and other social media do track all our movements and habits on their pages even if you do not have an account with them. Apple also tracks and stores our usage of our iPhone and iPad.

One reporter even used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

You have probably heard about the Big data the new term among information technology circles for the vast quantities of information now stored online, possibly forever. What we do on the Internet is being collected and combined with other data about us. Almost everything that we do now involves the internet and computer, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. All of that date is now being stored digitally and then correlated. When you consider how much time you spend on the Internet, through your computer and smartphone, it might be your whole life being tracked, compiled and compared from all these sources.

Would you imagine that someone could track you because you opened your Facebook account? For example some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks.

We can still take precautionary measures to prevent this. We can limit what we search on Google using browsers that allow us to delete cookies(Incognito Mode/Private Browsing). We can always use an alias on Social Networking sites like Facebook. We can use our cash instead of using our Credit Cards. And always make sure to use a reputable VPN service so that your IP address cannot be traced back to you