Your message was not lost on me. The mind blowing part (to me) is that it takes years before some average Joe (not necessarily security "expert" by profession)

Your message was not lost on me. The mind blowing part (to me) is that it takes years before some average Joe (not necessarily security "expert" by profession) decides to take a look at the logs to see what is REALLY going on behind the curtains - revealing something huge like this. Like you write, unless explicitly stated, companies will default to whatever is in their best interests, which is why Facebook going public should be a worrying thing for those users. As someone wrote, "if you are getting something for free you are not the customer, you are the product."