eli5: What it means websites keeps their users passwords in hash form?
In: Technology
Say you give a password to a website.
If they just kept the password, and someone stole it from them, then they would have your password and this would be really bad.
So instead they use math to scramble up the password in a specific way. Now instead of giving them the password, you take your password, scramble it up in that specific way, and then give it to them.
So they check to see if it matches.
Now say someone steals all those hashed passwords. It’s going to take a ton of computing power to figure out your password from the hash.
This is why so many companies ask you to make complicated passwords, because it makes them guessing the password from your hash that much harder.
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