Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The unencrypted form of an encrypted message.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun cryptography Alternative spelling of
plain text . - noun computing Alternative spelling of
plain text .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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I would never suggest that passwords be stored in plaintext, protected only by operating system and DB passwords.
What really happened at Ma.gnolia and lessons learned | FactoryCity 2009
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Or type it up in plaintext files formatted the Win XP default (ANSI encoding with \r\n at the end of each line) and mailing it in a cheap thumb drive/memory card.
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There are still services that store the passwords in plaintext in their databases (which should never be done) and if someone manages to break into the database [3], that person might get an access to the passwords.
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Of course you could just have pulled the name of the products and their manufacturers off the boxes in plaintext somewhere, but this was a kind of v. 1. 0″ thought experiment.
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Off-the-shelf Ubicomp: Barcodes & Google Blast Open Politics of Labels 2002
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If you’re fine with daily or hourly backups and don’t have too much data (An organisation opting to store in plaintext would have to have special precautions so that could never happen.
What really happened at Ma.gnolia and lessons learned | FactoryCity 2009
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I filled out a survey today for Heifer, one of the coolest charities, and at the end there was a password entry item that not only sent the password to the server in plaintext (sadly common) but didn’t even bother to obscure the password when you typed it in the form, which was completely weird and sloppy.
Heifer, you’re fabulous, but this survey collection company you hired… « Dyepot, Teapot 2006
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In a way, it seems that the plaintext is a metaphor for the work of the code breaker, or perhaps of the CIA itself.
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If someone scrambles a message to make it illegible, the original message is called plaintext, and the scrambled message is called ciphertext.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008
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For simplicity, normal message text shall be called plaintext, and the encrypted form, ciphertext.
Modern Mechanix 2008
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If someone scrambles a message to make it illegible, the original message is called plaintext, and the scrambled message is called ciphertext.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008
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