We’ve started using Google docs and calendar for weekly household budgeting. The privacy issues I guess don’t really bother me. About all anyone would see is that we drop $130 frequently at Trader Joe’s were someone to take the trouble to find out. The important stuff is all offline.

That said I found this kind of cool little bit of added security for Google applications:

“Create bookmarks (or modify them if you already have them) for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and iGoogle (your Google homepage) using https instead of http, like so: https://mail.google.com/mail/”

This encrypts data as it is transferred between you and Google – whereas when you log in to the “http” address all that is encrypted is your login. Once logged in, everything sent (email, calendar events, notes, IM, etc. is sent in plain text, which can be easily captured and read by 3rd parties. Encrypting this data makes it much harder to eavesdrop on.

A more in-depth explanation and why you might want to do this is at the link above. The only catch I saw was that using the links between different applications on the Google sites themselves will always still take you back to the unencrypted pages.