> Sure, their servers might be in a top secret location. But the problem is that they know your password. Which means any bad actor, like a rogue employee, a hacker, or a government agency can snoop on your data without you knowing.
What on earth?
1. The server operator might accuse you of doing something offering as proof a record that "you" logged in, but actually they knew the password so it was them.
This seems kind of silly if the server is a forum about a video game you like and the consequence of the alleged wrong doing is a permanent ban. But if the server is your bank, and the consequence is they convince a jury you tried to commit fraud and you go to jail when actually their employee has stolen your money using access to your password... that's pretty serious.
2. People re-use passwords. They know they shouldn't, but they do anyway. So "of course" the operator of "Puppy Fan Forum" knows your password, but it's also the password for your Amazon account, and next thing you know there's $1000 of dog treats billed to your credit card going to the operator's home in Ohio.
1. This is actually good news. It provides deniability. You can, for instance, do something bad and then claim that the owner did it.
2. People really shouldn't reuse passwords, but I see your point.
Imagine the reaction a person from the 18th century would have if I told them it's silly to burn things to make light. You're the 18th century person in this scenario. You have never seen an incandescent light bulb, let alone an LED so I'm clearly crazy right? Of course you burn things to make light, how else would it be possible?
There is no need to send your password to somebody in order for them to authenticate you as someone who knows the password. Symmetric PAKEs which do this are actually relatively common in new systems that had a cryptographer help design them today, Bob knows the correct password is "Sesame" and Alice tells Bob something which proves to Bob she knows it too, but even if Eve hears everything both of them say she doesn't learn "Sesame" and won't be able to satisfy Bob that she knows the password.
For real human passwords, verified by humans, like "What's my favourite vegetable?" there's a wonderful protocol the Socialist Millionaire's Protocol, which lets you play this out, each participant says what they think the password is, and the protocol tells them both if they gave the same answer. Because humans are in the loop this can use low quality passwords, if I try to "brute force" you by guessing every possible vegetable you'll get sick of me wasting your time and disconnect.
Better yet, asymmetric PAKEs make it possible for Alice to tell Bob a fact which Bob can use to verify that Alice knows some password P, but without Bob knowing P. Eve can hear everything they say and still doesn't know P and can't impersonate Alice.
This stuff is almost as old as the World Wide Web.
Your "you're the 18th century person" comment is needlessly insulting as well, especially given that what you've commented is basically irrelevant.
Everything we do is Open Source.
Get your facts straight.
Yes, the NSA really did use backdoor access to servers to spy on millions of people.
Snowden.
So use better security, like real cryptography.
No, they're true, which is what makes your reaction so interesting. You might more successfully argue that this (other people knowing your password) is a trade worth making, but then as I explained you don't need to make this trade at all, so the value you're getting by accepting the current practice is zero.
The thing they're "selling" on that site (promoting) is a distributed system where only you can decrypt your own data. There are a bunch of situations where that's not applicable, but even in those situations the other party doesn't need to know your password - so why do most sites do this?
Mostly laziness.
There are literally zero situations in which I would get actual real-world better security from a site not having my password, given (a) that they're properly hashing it, and (b) the password isn't used to encrypt any personal data.
Claiming that sites doing those two things have "fake security" is the kind of bullshit that smells like a marketing scam, which is exactly what makes me suspect they're selling something. (Again, without having any further evidence in that regard.)
Even if a site is using a password to encrypt personal data (basically the ProtonMail scenario), I still have to trust the site itself not to steal my password, so additional security provided in that scenario is marginal at best.
The claims are akin to "we use only 512 bit AES, sites with only 256 bit keys have FAKE SECURITY". It's at best extremely misleading, and hard to imagine that it's not some cynical FUD marketing technique.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/facebook-stored-hundreds...
Claims that this means Facebook weren't "really" properly hashing it or are otherwise an exception constitute a No True Scotsman argument.
It is _definitively_ less safe to do what is commonly done today. There is no _practical_ benefit and there are plenty of things that can go wrong.