Mozilla Weave, Where Exactly Will My Data Be ?

I am sure by now you have all seen the recent news of Mozilla’s new foray into a web service called Weave. Michael Arrington has a post here, Om Malik here, and Mathew Ingram has one here. While Michael and Om basically describe the service itself, Mathew touches on a few of the questions that popped into my head when I first read of the service

Basically Weave, as Mr. Arrington summed it up

is a new project that will store user information – like bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences and customizations, and sync it to your Firefox account. Users can then access that information in the event of a hard drive failure, or if they are on a guest machine (say, at a cyber cafe).

On the surface, like many ideas that turn out not to be so good (Beacon), it seems like a pretty cool idea, one that is most likely inevitable and one that could be very useful as our computing habits continue to expand beyond a single logon location. I do however question the integrity of how our data will be stored. I mean if you are talking about a place to store bookmarks, thats is one thing. but when you start talking about passwords, browsing history, and personal customizations that is another matter entirely.

According to the Mozilla web site, here are a couple of the organizing principles:

• provide users with the ability to fully control and customize their online experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)

The first one struck me as a bit similar to the previously mentioned Beacon. I wonder if it will be in an opt-in or opt-out fashion. It is not the friends and family part that bothers me, it is the third parties that worries me. At least they are planning on client side encryption by default.

The have a web page set up showing the details of the project to include roadmaps and how to get involved. I think it is a very interesting concept on the surface and most likely a direction we need to be moving toward, but I am not sure the masses are ready to have all their data out of their direct control.