Facebook Privacy - Round II

It has been very amusing to follow the very recent privacy events occurring on Facebook. Almost each day this week a new event, article, and round of commentary has surfaced regarding the change and reneging of Facebook's privacy policy. The first article that I found was here which detailed the change that Facebook made, which allowed it to continue to use any information that was posted by a user, for an unlimited amount of time, even after the user account itself was deleted from the system. As expected, tens of thousands of Facebook users voiced their displeasure. A group was even preparing to file a complaint to the FTC as well.
The next day or so, an article researched the various privacy polices of other online sites, and posted the most interesting sections of the policies. Essentially, almost any online company/service has a tightly worded policy that boils down to the users having no right to their privacy for any type of data or actions performed with the respective service. Interestingly some of the terms of service are very close to the new Facebook policy of retaining any type of account information even after the account has been deleted.
Fortunately for Facebook users, Facebook, yielded to the viral campaign and reversed its policy. It is interesting, though, that other services such as Monster.com, which retain user data after the termination of an account, have not been forced via viral campaigns to change their terms of service. Perhaps such an outcry has not been made since the users just don't know about the policy. Or maybe these users don't care.
Regardless, users who send any type of communication using any type of online service should not expect that the data they send is protected for the privacy in any way, unless explicitly indicated. In other words, users should assume that anything online is public knowledge and could be made available to the public domain unless unless explicitly told otherwise. Otherwise, it is up to the users to protect, encrypt and/or obfuscate their data.
But who actually reads the terms of service or wants to deal with the hassle of encrypting their data? Maybe these recent Facebook incidents will cause more people to take the time to read and to understand the terms of service and at the very least think twice about making their inner most thoughts available online.