A smart speaker let you talk to a smart thermostat without getting out of bed. That's progress, right?

Now I've got a new attitude: It's not just what I can get out of technology - I want to know what the technology gets out of me.

For the past year, I've been on the trail of the secret life of our data. What happens when you put your iPhone to sleep at night? Does Amazon's Alexa eavesdrop on your family? Who gets to know where you drive - and where you swipe your credit card?

Trying to get straight answers has been, literally, a full-time job. I've digested the legal word salad of privacy policies, interrogated a hundred companies and even hacked into a car dashboard to grab my data back. There are lots of stories about online threats, but it feels different watching your personal information streaming out of devices you take for granted. This year I learned there is no such thing as "incognito." Just stepping out for an errand, I discovered, lets my car record where I shop, what I listen to and even how much I weigh.

Learning how everyday things spy on us made me, at times, feel paranoid. Mostly, my privacy project left me angry. Our cultural reference points - Big Brother and tinfoil hats - don't quite capture the sickness of an era when we gleefully carry surveillance machines in our pockets and install them in our homes.