'Who uses this besides the government?'

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Kyndra from Somewhere Out There -

I suppose encryption is mostly used by the goverment when they are being secretive about events or projects. Does anyone else really use encryption. I find it to be some complicated that most probably would not use this as a form of security? Enlighten me if I am wrong.

Comment #1 Elroy from New York -

You and I when we access our bank, credit card, and often times even our email with services like hotmail.

Hopefully, ALL the businesses that store information about us.

Comment #2 Keter from the garage door -

We use PGP software to encrypt emails containing sensitive in our business. This has become essential with the amount of hacking that is going on. Trouble is that it is a real pain to implement and installation can often cause one to curse wildly! It is about the most user-unfriendly stuff that I have ever used and the company seem completely indifferent to this. I have gotten used to it but can't say that I like it. Pity there is no really viable alternative out there today that I have heard of.

Comment #3 Delino from California -

Quite right. Every time you access a website over SSL, you are using encryption even though you may not be aware of it. So online banking and most e-commerce transactions will most certainly use some form of encryption. I also sometimes use PGP to encrypt my e-mail and I even encrypt some of my instant messaging.

Comment #4 Keter from the garage door -

One of the other useful functions that PGP serves is that allows you to encrypt any files on your system or conversely to 'shred' files so that they can never be recovered and read by 3rd parties. One of the mistakes many people make is to think that deleting a file renders it inaccessible to outsiders. Even deleting the files in the recycle bin doesn't achieve this. Apparently software is available that can even find files on a formatted hard drive, which is pretty scary.

Comment #5 jackie (63.176.159.91) -

What is encrytion? I have heard it alot posted on here but have no iea what it means.. can someone help me with this?

Comment #6 Debbie (63.176.159.8) -

I have no idea what encrytion is, and when does it go on and how often does this occur? Is this when the government or any one else can access your information at any time? I would also like to know more information about this and is this legal?

Comment #7 Mac from UK -

Encryption is simply a means of passing important information and having it arrive at its intended recipient without being read or changed by unauthorized people/processes.

It is used in all walks of life. And not just by the government (Although the strongest forms of encryption do tend to be used for Military and Governmental use)

Encryption doesn’t need to be complex, but tends to be these days because of the evolution of the modern computer.

Caesar cipher was one of the earliest well known forms of encryptions which simply moved the letters of the alphabet across, i.e. A became Z and B became C.

HELLO THERE would read IFMMP UIFSF

As said above encryption is used in day to day life by you and you don’t even realise if. When logging into your bank or favourite webmail the password is being protected by encryption a lot of the time.

But also when you’re passing your credit card details to places such as PayPal or Amazon again you’re being protected by encryption.

The Wiki link about encryption is some interesting reading if you would like to know more.

Hope that helps.

Mac

• Wiki Encryption

Comment #8 Matt (68.42.152.135) - Sun Aug 15 22:16:03 2010

"Site Owner"

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