[besselheim]

> Really, the true advantage of a binary format is you generally assume that nobody messed with the data behind your back

I would rephrase that a bit and say the true advantage is flexibility, as you're not subject to the constraints of textual data.

The integrity of the data is a separate matter, and should be carefully verified rather than trusted implicitly. A huge amount of security vulnerabilities, and program crashes in general, come from errantly assuming that user-supplied data is correct.