What is Encryption or Decryption?
Encryption is the process of transforming plain text using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it
unreadable to anyone except those possessing a key that is associated with the encryption algorithm.
Decryption is the process of making the encrypted information readable again. A good encryption such AES
will make decryption virtually impossible if the hacker does not know the key.
One of the distinguish features of this site is that user login name is encrypted before it is being sent out over the internet.
On one hand, such feature give user an option to use a easy remembered login name without worrying about identity leaking. On the other hand,
PHRsT cannot recover your account because we never know who you are. Therefore, forget login name is simply means that you lost your
account.
PLEASE KEEP YOUR LOGIN/PASSWORD SAFE.
To mitigate this problem,
PHRsT offers a solution of login name recovery by keeping a user email address: a user is able to retrieve his/her login name
if correct password and email address are supplied to
Account Retrieval page. Similarly, user can retrieve
password by supplying correct login name and email address to
Account Retrieval page or, retrieve
email by supplying correct login name and password to
Account Retrieval page. Please notice that your
email is not required to use this website. It is only beneficial to recover your login and password.
When I login, I see some strange codes is being displayed under the login and password fields, what are they?
Those codes are the encryption form of your input data.
When you see your birth year after type in you login name, you can be reasonably safe to assume that you are accessing the
right website.
This is a popular website feature to prevent user from login to a fake website (phishing site). Some bad individual
builds fake sites that have very similar web address and look like the true website, waiting for users to make a typo mistake when input web address
and then steal their credentials.
Do I need to logout every time?
It is a good habit to login out each time you finish your inquiry. Otherwise phrst.org will expire your session in 30 minutes. If
you are accessing from your home computer, you can check an option "Keep sign in for ten days from this computer" in the
formal login form. It will keep your credentials in your local machine and automatically login for you in the next ten days.
What is a private key?
A private key is a string that should be known only by a limited people who suppose to access an encrypted message. A private key can decrypt a relevent
message quickly. People cannot decrypt an encrypted message without using a private key.
How can I export my data?
The easy way is to select the table you want to save; choose copy and then paste to a MS Excel spread sheet.
For export the complete data set in one file, please contact webmaster@phrst.org and we will work with you for a general solution based on
your new repository API.
