[bikamonki]

Correct, but every site where you signup does that and I do not think anyone cares. Maybe such API will not be for end users but for other apps to run signup forms against it and help users choose a better one. In any case, the whole password deal is broken. I now use my own offline pwd generator for the "important" sites but I guess I am not the average Internet user.

[akerl_]

What site out there is sending my plaintext passwords to a 3rd party service to validate their strength?

[bikamonki]

Hopefully none, and hopefully they are all following best practices to protect your password, but you trust them regardless. Besides, who said plain text, such service could use ssl.

[agersant]

I think he meant plaintext as opposed to a hash of the password.