• Encryption is a means of 'scrambling' a message or web page. It is used to make a transmission more secure, so that only the intended recipient of the message will be able to read the message. There are many means of enabling this encryption, both via hardware and software. A famous encryption program is called PGP.
• Modern encryption programs are becoming so secure now that some governments are insisting that the manufacturers of the programs build a 'back-door' into the program which will enable the government/police/intelligence communities to easily read the messages. This is so that criminals who use the Internet do not have access to unbreakable encryption.
• There are different levels of encryption, which is often described by the number of bits used within the encryption. Thus a system using 128 bit encryption would be much more secure than one using 32 bit encryption.