Krunch? Try “Thud”

Anyone taken a look at Krunch (featured on LifeHacker today). The service allows you to upload files, “krunch” them (compress them in a number of common formats) or “unkrunch” them (uncompress them), and download the results. It’s a cute way to solve the problem of not having a utility on your system to perform compression or decompression for a specific compression type.

Or so it claims.

Does anyone think that this is a clever way to gather vast amounts of potentially sensitive data from unwitting Web 2.0 buzzword-addled users? I mean, it doesn’t even use so much as HTTPS to handle file transfers. There’s no privacy policy (not that it would really get you anything – but, come on, they’re not even trying). You have no idea what’s being done with your data! While I’m all for solving problems with web-based tools, I’m not sure any problem is worth throwing my precious data up to any random service to be probulated.

Then again, maybe that’s the way things are going – nobody seems to mind that all their online webmail service provider is reading their email, or their desktop search provider is reading their hard drives. Why would files be any different?