Koelling: web sharing is only as secure as apache, which is the web server used in OSX. i believe that apache is very very secure (compared to, eg IIS).
telnet and ssh are also fairly secure, but telnet is unencrypted and ssh is encrypted, making it a much more desirable option to protect yourself from insecure networks, packet sniffers and such. this doesn t mean that telnet server has security holes, it just means it is not proactive about security. ssh is better. use it.
so your questoin: is web sharing more secure than ssh/telnet? yes. apache has very limited access to the system, and it is limited in what files it can execute. telnet/ssh gives you almost unlimited access to the system. you can create files execute code, all sorts of things, with ssh/telnet that you cannot do with apache.
iconcow: ssh and ftp are pretty secure. i don t think the risk is that big. note that there is ftp and then there is sftp. ftp is to telnet as sftp is to ssh. use sftp. it is encrypted.
themacko: there is one way that windows users could access these public folders: buy third party software for the windows users, like PCMacLAN.
you could also install samba on your mac, and tell it to share out ~/Public Folder, so that windows users can see your public folder through their network neighborhoods (if they are on your LAN they can still connect if they are not, it just won t show up in network neighborhood)
OK, so to reiterate what testuser iconcow said: ~/Public Folder is for file sharing over AFP, and ~/Sites is for web serving. each option has its advantages and disadvantages, so it depends on what you want to do. ssh and ftp are other options that have oher advantages.
