Encryption


In most cases you can not be absolutely sure your data could by no means fall into the hands of someone else. This might e.g. happen by interception of data when sending it via the Internet or it might be an unattended person who gains access to your computer.
To deny reading the data someone might have stolen you may decide to encrypt it. An encryption program would change the original data to something which looks like random data and which is completely useless and unreadable for others. To retrieve the original data a secret pass is needed to decrypt the data again.

A very simple encryption which is often used by children would be to replace each letter with the one following in the alphabet ("A" becomes "B", "B" becomes "C" a.s.o). This would make the message "THIS IS SECRET" to "UIJT JT TFDSFU" which can't be read by someone who don't know the code. The encryptions used by programs are not that simple but are depending on the used method counted as almost absolutely safe.


Back