It could also be a way to offload sensitive processing & storage to a third party; e.g. Stripe. I'm leaning much more toward John Young's (Cryptome) viewpoint

It could also be a way to offload sensitive processing & storage to a third party; e.g. Stripe. I'm leaning much more toward John Young's (Cryptome) viewpoint of information security -- smoke and mirrors. Maybe nothing is secure and it is only a question of how interested the adversary is in creating a break and then what they decide to do with the information after. Robert Cringely has the most practical advice I've read -- keep secure communications off the internet.