Encrypting and Decrypting Messages

Send and Receive Encrypted Messages

You can encrypt and decrypt messages using this page. Once you have your encrypted text, you can send it to your contact using any messaging or social-media app.

If someone finds your encrypted message, they will only be able to decrypt it if they know about this page AND they know your secret "Crypto Word." At the bottom of the page, there is an explanation (with a video) showing how the encryption works. (Do not worry. Knowing how it works is not much help to someone who wants to decrypt it unless they have a state-level supercomputer.)

How Does This Encryption Work?

This 5-minute video shows how the encryption is carried out. As you will see, your message is extremely safe!

Summary of the Encryption Method

This encryption method:

• (1) Converts each character to a decimal number (its ASCII code).
• (2) Converts each number to a hexadecimal number.
• (3) Converts each number (not letter) in the hexadecimal to a letter.
• (4) Places the text horizontally in a table whose size is determined by your secret word.
• (5) Regathers the text vertically from the table in an order determined by your secret word.
• (6) Inserts random padding letters to further obfuscate.

Every run of the encryption and decryption offers a specific explanation, but, if you watch the video, you'll understand why your message is still secure.

How Secure Is This Message?

We provide an explanation of how every message is encoded. This, however, does not mean that the message is insecure. It is, in fact, extremely secure.

If a person who wanted to decode this message did not understand the mechanics of the encoding, they would have zero chance of decoding your message. If, however, the decoder did understand the encoding-decoding system, then they would still find it extremely difficult to decode a message. Before they could start decoding, they would need to know the secret word's length and the order of its columns (or the secret word itself). There are no clues in the encrypted message to the secret word's length or the order of its columns.

Also, the decrypted message is not stored anywhere. So, there is no history to check. There are no deleted files to recover. Once the message has been read, the decrypted message is gone forever. As a worst-case scenario, it will exist in its encrypted form in whatever application you used to send it.