Web Apps...Privacy?

Mozilla Prism, Mozilla's newest web tool, finally made it to version 1 beta 1 last week. I have been trying it out and I find it to be a very good tool in getting to a site you need very quickly. In a nutshell Mozilla Prism is a tool that enables you to make webapps out of your favourite websites and you can choose to get rid of the navigation toolbar and any other toolbars you don't need. Very useful for Google's many tools as well as Don't Forget the Milk and Facebook.

This new tool however, made me think about the direction the web is taking. It appears to be taking the direction of quick, easy access with minimal clutter in the browser. Good way to go but it also appears we are taking another direction which is a little troubling. We are trying to take the internet and integrate it with our everyday offline experience. This is great in one sense as it will allow quick, seamless access to your faviourite sites but in another sense it could be a bad thing. By having this integration we are opening our computers to be snooped upon by 'trusted' sites like Facebook or Google. I know this would be in the EULA but does anyone read that crap? This leaves us open to privacy breeches galore because every time we integrate the OS and the web we move ever closer to Google, Apple and Microsoft among others knowing everything we do...yes even our phone calls and what we say in our sleep.

Overall the trend of creating 'Web Apps' of our favourite sites is a positive trend but we have to very careful about our privacy when we do this. I would suggest before installing anything of this sort skim over the EULA before installing, but will anyone really do that?