WHERE do you shop? How big is your house? Do you give money to charity?

Do you own a timeshare? Or a credit card? Have you bought a car recently? Are you in debt? In a new relationship? A new job?

5 Facebook wants to know your income, how much you give to charity, and your political affiliations, so it can share the information with advertisers Credit: Getty Images

Are you a Tory? Or a Corbynite? Are you pregnant? When’s your birthday?

This might seem like the kind of information we’d only trust to our closest friends. Yet one person knows the answer to all these and more: Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.

They’re from a list of 98 extremely personal details that his social network allows advertisers to pick from when targeting their messages.

WHAT DOES FACEBOOK KNOW ABOUT YOU? 1. Your income

2. If you live away from your home town

3. Property size

4. If you have a credit card

5. If it's all been paid off

6. If you commute

7. Whether you buy medication

8. The type of holiday you enjoy

9. How old your car is

10. If you own a games console

11. If you use coupons

12. If you are in a long distance relationship

See the bottom of this article for the full list!

5 Facebook made £4.8billion from ad sales in the last year as it can connect advertisers with people it knows will be interested in their products Credit: Getty Images

The result has been a digital goldmine. In just three months this year, Facebook made £4.8billion from ad sales, because it could point advertisers to exactly the people they were after.

But how did Facebook get that data in the first place?

For much of it, the answer is simple: because you told it.

Your profile gives the site your name, age, relationship status and so on. But it also knows what you “like”.

Every time you hit the thumbs-up button, whether it’s on a pop star, a football team or a TV show, Facebook is adding that detail to its file on you.

And since Facebook’s billions of users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on its site — and Instagram, which it also owns — that’s an awful lot of clicks.

It can then fill in any blanks by looking at other people who “like” the same things as you and assuming you’ll probably have other “likes” in common as well.

This is the first step of a complex mathematical model which allows it to build a very clear picture of who you are in the real world.

5 Facebook can also make demographic assumptions based on your "likes" - for example if you like the page for actor Morgan Freeman's voice it will assume you have a high IQ Credit: Getty Images

For example, if you like tennis player Maria Sharapova, Facebook is likely to conclude that you are a single man. If you are a man and like the group for the musical Wicked, Facebook will assume you are gay. If you like the Facebook group for Morgan Freeman’s Voice, the site guesses that you have a high IQ.

Facebook’s experts use likes to deduce relationship status, whether people smoke, their race, religion, political affiliation, sexuality — even whether your parents were together when you were growing up.

This kind of research isn’t new. In the Seventies, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu found architects tended to like the abstract Russian painter Kandinsky, while dentists preferred the impressionist Renoir.

But the sheer volume of data generated by the internet makes it easier than ever to find correlations, assuming your privacy settings allow it.

5 The real secret is that Facebook tracks users across the whole internet, using like buttons on other sites to map even more of your data in return for telling companies more about you Credit: Reuters

The real secret, though, is that Facebook is always trying to track you, whether you’re on its site or not. If a website has “like” buttons embedded on it, data is going back to Facebook.

Same if it’s installed the “Facebook Pixel” — a piece of tracking code many websites host which lets the social network know when you visit them in return for Facebook sharing information about you.

If you let it, Facebook also knows where you are physically, via the IP address of your computer or your phone GPS. So it’s easy to work out where and when you go to work, and guess the job you do.

Its smartphone app can track what photos you’ve taken and where you are, and send offers for nearby businesses.

As if that weren’t enough, Facebook has outside help via partnerships such as that with credit reference agency Experian — a data-mining giant that has access to many Brits’ financial information.

5 Facebook doesn't let you control what data it collects and will always sell it on - so it's no wonder Mark Zuckerberg is raking it in on ad sales Credit: Getty Images

Facebook can approach these firms and tell them what they know about you. The data firm can then add to their factfile with estimates about how many credit cards people like you have and how much you owe on them.

By taking this data and blending in what it knows from your likes and statuses, Facebook has the most detailed picture of users’ habits on the planet.

Of course, this is all legally above board, as you signed away your rights to privacy when you joined Facebook in the first place.

Facebook insists it collects this data to make your experience of its site more satisfying, to show you only the things that you most want to see. And all data is anonymised, so advertisers don’t actually know who you are by name, just a profile of the things you like.

HOW TO STOP FACEBOOK COLLECTING YOUR DATA 1. Use the “private browsing” setting whenever you are online.

2. Clear out your cookies – these are small bits of software that stay on your computer and track your activity.

3. Change your phone settings to stop the Facebook app seeing things such as your photos or location.

4. Don’t “like” things on Facebook. Instead, deprive the social network of data about you.

5. Log off!

But many people feel the amount of data being captured — the fact that an algorithm might be peering over our shoulder at every photo we take, every keystroke we type — is really kind of creepy.

What’s creepier is that this is only the beginning. Facebook will let you control what ads you see, but not what data it collects.

As it ramps up its efforts and others follow suit, we will end up with our whole lives, online and off, being tracked and scrutinised — then sold for profit.

So it’s no surprise Mark Zuckerberg is worth £40billion. And counting.

What do they know?

Here is the full list of all the facts and secrets about you Facebook is trying to discover...

1. Your location

2. Age

3. Generation

4. Gender

5. Language

6. Education level

7. Field of study

8. School

9. Ethnic background

10. Income and net worth

11. Home ownership and type of home

12. Value of home

13. Size of your property

14. Square footage of home

15. The year your home was built

16. Who lives in your house

17. Whether you have an anniversary approaching in the next month

18. If you’re living away from family or hometown

19. Whether you’re friends with someone who has an anniversary, is newly married or engaged, recently moved, or has an upcoming birthday

20. If you’re in a long-distance relationship

21. If you’re in a new relationship

22. If you have have a new job

23. If you’re recently engaged

24. If you’ve just got married

25. If you’ve moved house recently

26. When your birthday is coming up

27. Parents

28. Expectant parents

29. Mothers, divided by ‘type’ (which includes ‘soccer mums’ or other maternal tribes)

30. If you are likely to engage in politics

31. Whether you are conservative or liberal

32. Relationship status

33. Employer

34. Industry

35. Job title

36. Office type

37. Interests

38. Whether you own a motorcycle

39. If you’re planning to buy a car

40. If you have purchased auto parts or accessories recently

41. If you are likely to buy auto parts or services

42. The style and brand of your car

43. The year your car was bought

44. Age of car

45. How much money you’re likely to spend on next car

46. Where you are likely to buy next car from

47. How many employees your company has

48. If you own small businesses

49. If you work in management or are executives

50. If you have donated to charity (divided by type)

51. Operating system

52. If you play browser games

53. If you own a gaming console

54. If you have created a Facebook event

55. If you have used Facebook Payments

56. If you have spent more than average on Facebook Payments

57. If you administer a Facebook page

58. If you have recently uploaded photos to Facebook

59. Internet browser

60. Email service

61. Early/late adopters of technology

62. If you are an expat and what country you left

63. If you belong to a credit union, national bank or regional bank

64. If you are an investor

65. Number of credit lines

66. If you are an active credit card users

67. Credit card type

68. If you own a debit card

69. If you carry a balance on your credit card

70. If you listen to the radio

71. What TV shows you like

72. If you use a mobile device and what brand it is

73. Internet connection type

74. If you have recently bought a smartphone or tablet

75. Whether you access the Internet through a smartphone or tablet

76. If you use coupons

77. The type of clothing your household buys

78. Which time of year you do the most shopping

79. Whether you are a ‘heavy’ buyer of beer, wine or spirits

80. What groceries you buy

81. Whether you buy beauty products

82. Whether you buy medications

83. Whether you buy/spend money on household products

84. Whether you buy/spend money on products for kids or pets, and what kinds of pets

85. If your household makes more purchases than is average

86. If you tend to shop online or offline

87. The types of restaurants user you eat at

88. The kinds of stores you shop at

89. If you’re interest in adverts offering auto insurance, mortgages or satellite telly

90. Length of time user you have lived your house

91. If you are likely to move soon

92. If you are are interested in the Olympics, football or cricket

93. If you travel frequently

94. Whether you commute to work

95. The type of holiday you enjoy

96. If you have recently returned from a holiday

97. If you have used a travel app

98. Whether you are involved in a timeshare