A new report from the Pew Research Center Internet Project has found that the next decade will bring a continued erosion of online privacy, which will mean that “in 2025, everything will be transparent. People will not have the illusion of privacy. …This will, of course, have consequences."

That’s quite an understatement.

The privacy in question is not just the kind of high-profile scandals like the hacked Sony emails or the celebrity photographs that leaked to the Web last year. Using caution in posting personal material on social networks is still a good idea, but maintaining privacy in the future will not just be a function of keeping embarrassing pictures off of Instagram. The dangers to personal privacy largely stem from the development of what is often referred to as the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things is a label for the increasing interconnectedness of everyday objects. The day is coming when the milk in your refrigerator will have a computer chip that will connect online with a “smart refrigerator,” which will, in turn, send you a text message reminding you to pick up a gallon of milk on your way home. This added convenience will produce huge new amounts of data that will be of great interest to those who sell the products that are communicating with you. Such behavior is already being monitored in ways that most people ignore — until a Facebook or Google ad pops up on their screen that reflects a recent purchase.

This kind of intrusiveness is already ubiquitous, and it will become even more so in the years to come.

Some insist that this mess will simply sort itself out. “Providers who refrain from owning their customer's data, and stick to facilitating the owner in handling their data in a trusted way, will win,” said technology futurist Marcel Bullinga, suggesting that free-market pressures will force businesses to come up with solutions in order to maintain the public trust. That may well be the case, but it’s too much of a risk to simply watch and wait. Any free-market solution also has the potential to divide consumers into those who can afford to pay a premium for online privacy and those who can’t.

Other observers insist that this is an insoluble problem, and one researcher stated in the Pew study that “[t]oo many people will accept the subversion of privacy as inevitable and just a 'sad fact of life.’ ” We don’t see that as an acceptable outcome, and we welcome efforts, both public and private, to address this problem now to avoid that kind of future.