JUST because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

And now, in fact, we know that they definitely are after you. Yes you, sitting there on your beige-coloured sofa, reading this newspaper while eating Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast and wearing a blue shirt.

The US government, it has been revealed, is ‘after’ pretty much all of us by spying on a load of stuff we do online.

So this week’s handy cut-out-and-keep guide explains how to protect your privacy from the US government.

Here are my tips:

1. Unplug your computer from the internet. It might seem a bit drastic, but this is by far the most effective and surest way of knowing that you’re not being spied on.

Be honest with yourself — would you really miss it? I think you can live without a few pictures of cats, regular updates about what a ‘fab weekend’ your Facebook friends had and a video of a panda sneezing.

Go outside and do something more productive like run, laughing, through a knee-high meadow. Build a raft. Help an old lady across the road. Smell some roses. You get the point.

2. Don’t use anything run by Apple, Google, Microsoft or Facebook. As that pretty much includes everything these days, I refer you to point number one.

3. Don’t be a terrorist. Pretty easy, this one . . . most people shouldn’t struggle with it. I’m assuming here (against my better journalistic judgement — I was always taught never to assume anything) that the US government’s primary aim with this colossal spying operation is to catch terrorists.

Having said that – who really knows? As, we are led to believe, it is a huge, sweeping, all-encompassing and secret spying operation with no democratic mandate or oversight, then it could be used for pretty much anything. So forget point number three. It’s pointless.

4. Wear a tinfoil hat. That will definitely prevent spies from intercepting your brainwaves using WiFi. I think that’s possible. Not sure what type of encryption your brain uses, but the foil will almost certainly make it totally safe.

And thus concludes my guide. Feel a bit cheated? Well, tough. There’s nothing you can do about it, except write a strongly worded letter of complaint with key words underlined in green pen.

If you’re feeling really bad, then spare a thought for Edward Snowden, who revealed all this, and is now wanted — for spying. Americans never did understand the concept of irony, did they?