Consumers’ concern about online privacy are at all-time high due to the emerging technologies – for instance, e-commerce and mobile devices– which collects a big chunk of consumer data, the Pew Research study says.

However, people who worry about “privacy eroding into the river and being gone forever,” added Wittes, ignore how those benefits actually increase privacy.

The rise of online sales has meant you can mail-order products that might be too embarrassing to buy in person, Wittes added. “Without looking at somebody in the eye, without confessing the interest in this subject, you get what you want.”

Because all e-books look the same on an e-reader, for instance, you can read Fifty Shades of Grey on your Kindle without shame—which may explain why the e-version of this book has outsold its printed version.

The value of the privacy of those purchases, Wittes argued, outweighs the value of the data given for them—like email, credit card numbers, browsing history, personal preferences, and location-based information.

Wittes suggested changing vocabulary that consumers use to describe the benefits they get with giving up some personal information. It’s not only “convenience,” he said, “it’s also privacy benefits.”

Joshua New, policy analyst at the Information Technology Innovation Foundation, said data collection also brings economic benefits to consumers.

He cited car insurance as an example. Instead of deciding your insurance premium based on broad factors – for instance, age, gender, neighborhood, drivers could use data to prove that they are cautious and don’t brake rapidly to get lower premiums even they are in the “high-risk section” based on traditional measurements, New said.

People who strive for online privacy should be aware that there is a cost to it. Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, said it’s not impossible for people to protect their privacy if they don’t mind losing the benefits of giving up their data.

“Companies can offer paid options where user information won’t be collected,’ Thierer said. “But at the moment, I don’t think many people will pay for their privacy.”

A balance between consumer privacy and technology innovation is what the Federal Trade Commission is pursuing. Totally prohibiting data collection, which will create barriers for breakthrough innovations, is definitely not the solution.

“We should definitely limit the use of data,” said Federal Trade Commission member Maureen Ohlhausen, “but not limit the collection of data.”

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Perhaps it’s the articles earlier this month in the New York Times and MarketingVOX about how coupons can be traced directly back to the person who used it. Or a story that Orayb Aref Najjar, a journalism professor at Northern Illinois University who specializes in cyber-communities and freedom of the press, said she recently read about how the information collected from a person is then interpreted and can be used against them.

“If you buy certain products … that means you are likely to pay your mortgage on time,” Najjar said in an e-mail. “So the information they collect about you is not neutral, and is not there to serve you … but to be bundled and sold …

“What worries me most is not the information gathered (governments always do that), but the extent and volume of information gathered and collated from different sources, and the way it may be interpreted. I worry about the competency of the interpreters. The issue becomes more crucial when it comes to information gathered internationally.”

Jay Stanley, public education director of ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program, said Americans do not understand “the extent to which the information they give to one institution is stored, used, traded and combined.”

Yes, people willingly give out information to online stores and social networks. But some people also give out information unwillingly, Stanley said. They would rather not share their Social Security number and other personal information just because it’s required on some form.

Either way, Stanley says the consequences of that information sharing is mostly invisible to the individual. But over time, it is becoming more apparent how that information is being used, he said.

The ACLU is part of the Digital Due Process coalition, along with Google, AT&T, Microsoft, and technology and privacy groups, to get Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Though the changes are not expected to drastically affect information gathering for the purposes of national security and marketing, Stanley said it is a stop toward making sure there is a proper process in place to broadly protect online privacy.

“With changes in technology, the substantive privacy we’ve always enjoyed is rapidly eroding,” Stanley said.