Technical
Hashing
A one-way mathematical function that converts data into a fixed-length string — used for password storage and data integrity.
Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function that converts input data into a fixed-length output (the "hash" or "digest"). Unlike encryption, hashing is irreversible — you cannot recover the original data from the hash.
Common Use Cases
- Password storage — store the hash, not the plaintext password (e.g. bcrypt, Argon2)
- Data integrity — verify that data has not been tampered with (e.g. SHA-256 checksums)
- Pseudonymization — replace identifiers with hashed values
Important Note
Hashing alone does not necessarily achieve anonymization. Hashed data can sometimes be re-identified through rainbow tables or brute-force attacks, especially for low-entropy inputs like email addresses. Salting (adding random data before hashing) mitigates this risk.