Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA's Prism program are truly horrifying, but shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Privacy is well and truly a thing of the past, and you don't have to be a terrorist or a paedophile to feel threatened by the fact that there are people who can read every email or private message you've ever sent or received.

Whoever dubbed the internet as 'the worldwide web' wasn't joking. Most of us have blindly walked into it and allowed our lives to be entangled in it. Almost everybody has a Facebook page these days, and no matter how much privacy you think you have, that page reveals a lot about you. Who your friends are, your likes, your interests. You've also more than likely sent private messages to people that you wouldn't like anyone else to read. All this can snooped on by people who know what they're doing.

Why would anyone snoop on you? There's a million reasons. Market research for one. Facebook is a giant open goldmine for anyone with the know-how to get around its flimsy 'privacy' settings. If someone told you ten years ago that you'd willingly put your life up on a website, you'd probably have said they were mad. Today it's as regular a part of life as brushing your teeth in the morning.

More and more of our lives are becoming integrated with the internet. Skype is fast replacing the telephone. Soon nobody will bother having a phone contract. Everybody will use some online IM application with a cam and mic from whatever handheld device is in fashion. Television as we know it will be the next thing to go.

The web is changing peoples' social behaviour. More and more people spend more time communicating with people online than actually going out and socialising. My daughter never stops tapping away at her iPad, talking to her mates, who all seem to see the world through a tiny screen. Her mum argues that it's better than all of them hanging around in the streets or the park and getting in trouble. I can see her point, but really they're missing out. The internet gives them the impression of having the world at their fingertips, but in reality they're growing up more entwined in the worldwide web than any of us could have predicted a decade ago.

It's becoming normal to live our lives through the internet. It's swallowing up almost everything, to the point where it's almost impossible to avoid, and somebody somewhere can see everything you do online. It might be a market research whizzkid. It might be someone in the CIA. It might be a Q type character from MI5. It might just as easily be the proverbial weirdo in his mother's basement.

There's no doubt the internet is a brilliant thing, but how many of us stop to think about how entwined our lives are in the worldwide web, and how potentially vulnerable that can make us?

Graveyard.