In another way, the online environs never had that much privacy. The big changes will be in the sophistication of data matching, including use of inferrential data matching. This means that the older levels of witholding info will not be as effective. Most people are becoming aware of the power of the Social Security Number and some other items but might not realize that phone number and Zip Codes can be matched with other data elements to filter down to other personal info. The results can be the loss of privacy or liberties in other ways.
Privacy protection is largely a personal responsibility.
The tools such as Zero Knowledge and Anonymizer are helpful. Fortunately, there is a solution.