Here is a helpful article on the subject:
Security Web 2.0: Open Season for the Attackers?

Most applications that service providers offer do something with your data, which, still, you have to commit to their systems, and henceforth put your ‘life’ in their hands.

But we live in an internet era, so why not have the service providers fetch your data from the web. This way, we, the people, are free to choose a storage provider we trust.

What we need is a standard which allows ‘them’ to define what data they need for their application to run (note that an application is usually just a nice way of interacting and displaying plain data), and for you to tell them where to get it, and to allow them to see it.

This way you can choose a storage provider with good security, and allow various application providers to fetch that data. For the application providers this means they don’t have to be responsible for storage and safekeeping.

Decouple the data (which belongs to you) from the applications (which are great, so you want to use them with your data) and a lot of problems disappear.

One of them would be duplication of effort, just think about how many times you have entered your ‘profile’ into various systems, instead of pointing them to one fixed place where you store your profile. more…

I also wanted to re-state that our members’ security is the top priority here at Box.net. If you are interested, please check out our security policy (http://www.box.net/shared/w31wi7688c)and feel free to contact me directly with any questions or concerns.

Take good care,
Kendra
kendra@box.net