Why is everyone on Facebook so paranoid about their privacy?

There’s a line in Desperately Seeking Susan where Madonna (Susan) reads aloud the diary of Roberta, the bored housewife she has swapped places with: ‘Couldn’t sleep. Went into kitchen. Gary came in, turn off light. Gary left. Finished birthday cake.’ Then she exclaims: ‘Pages of it; it’s got to be a cover — nobody’s life could be this boring!’

A related naughty thought often comes to mind when I see my chums worrying on Facebook about The Man stealing photos of their cat wearing rabbit ears or their own preferences in caffeinated beverages. If there is a stealthy cabal of shadowy figures seeking to make puppets out of us — mere paper dolls capering powerlessly at the whim of our faceless masters! — why do people with such dull lives believe they are in any way of interest to would-be Dr Evils? Or are cats-in-rabbit-ears fascinating code for something intriguing that only I haven’t been let in on?

It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found myself in a minority. When in July Facebook paid a $5 billion fine after its allegedly outrageous breaching of privacy, I couldn’t get worked up about it. I understand that Facebook violated privacy rules by flogging information about tens of millions of users without their knowledge to the international consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, which had boasted that it could ‘find your voters and move them to action’ using a team including data scientists and behavioural psychologists. I know that in 2013, the Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan used his app — This Is Your Digital Life — to ask 270,000 Facebook users questions about their personalities and that by answering them, the users granted Kogan access not only to their profiles but to those of their friends.