Write protect switch on USB thumb drive

My 8GB USB memory stick suddenly went wrong. No file could be written on it. It was because of a write protect switch toggled to the on position. I have used 5 USB thumb drives before, from 128 MB to 2GB and I never found a write protect switch on them. This is quite confusing. The provision of a write protect switch should be a treated as a standard feature for the benefit of consumers. Also, another aspect frustrating is the LED light. Some USB thumb drives are equipped with LED indicator to show the status of data access while some are not. I need to look at the LED to be sure that the USB thumb drive is working, reading and writing.