With the Internet, for the first time we truly stepped inside the machine–and vice versa.

The Internet of Things will heighten the process, as we’ll be tracked and quantified like never before, a process which holds great promise and threat. The catch: You won’t be able to opt out. From Danny Bradbury at the Guardian:

Whenever someone introduces a pervasive new technology, someone else gets worried about it. With many already worried about surveillance issues, it’s no wonder that nightmare privacy scenarios surrounding the IoT have been popping up.

“The scariest thing is that we don’t know what the scariest thing is,” said Geoff Webb, senior director of solution strategy at identity and access management firm NetIQ.

The problem with the IoT is that no one quite knows what it’s going to look like. It’s a continuum that things like Amazon’s Dash, connected cars and smart meters usher us along, rather than a state that we suddenly enter. No one really understood how the internet was going to affect things, and the impact of the IoT will probably be more pervasive, rolling out over time, but affecting us more immediately and in more profound ways.

One thing we can predict is that an internet of sensors and other devices could generate a vast ocean of information about our activities.

“People can pull that information together in ways that are very difficult to predict,” said NetIQ’s Webb.

Some rental car firms now include sensors in the vehicles that warn drivers if they are driving too recklessly, based on how quickly and volatile its movements are. Some services are using phone services to do the same. He worries that people might be denied car insurance, for example, based on sensors like these delivering data to interested parties.

“The capacity to correlate information is going to change all of those interactions,” worries Webb. “I lose power over a great deal of my life when there’s a massive amount of information over me that I don’t have control over.”

What about other breaches, though, that may be more difficult to avoid, or are simply invisible? Could your utility’s smart meter – or your Google Nest device – know when you arrive and leave at your home based on energy usage patterns? When your smart bathroom scale beams data to a cloud-based health service, could that data be used by a health insurance provider?•