Are you saying that if I explicitly set my privacy settings on Facebook to be fully private, it is still o.k. for Facebook to make my data public because I should have no expectation of privacy on the Internet?
Doesn't sound at all like that's what the parent poster is trying to say. Sounds more like a caution against posting anything, anywhere, that could be harmful or damaging to oneself, while harbouring the unreasonable expectation that it will remain private for eternity. Whether that privacy breach comes from maliciousness, or negligence, the same cautionary principle applies.
The challenge is that there are two orthogonal issues here: Sympathy for users and criticism for businesses.
If someone spends thousands of dollars on hair implants because they believed an informercial telling them that they will get laid every night of the week, I would sit them down and have a long talk about tooth fairies, santa clause, bridges, and swamp land salesmen.
But I would still despise the businesspeople preying on the gullibility or naivité of their customers.
So perhaps it is a very good idea not to put anything online that would ruin you if it leaked. But it's still reprehensible to leak things after setting an expectation that they are private.
