Have you ever wanted to send sensitive information to someone else over the internet? I’m sure you must’ve felt a little paranoid about your details getting stolen along the way. Ever wished there was a way to send messages across to a friend without others knowing? Or even not having the slightest hint that you’re sending a secret message? Do you need a way to disguise your message so that no one could tell anything from plainly looking at it?

Magicians often use this method to distract their audiences away from what is really happening — it’s called misdirection. This is mainly to get someone to focus their attention on something, while you’re performing something totally different.

While cryptography stands for encrypting or coding messages in a way that no one who doesn’t hold the key can understand them, steganography means hiding messages, so that no one who doesn’t know it’s there will realize it’s there in the first place. Naturally, both techniques are best used in combination, and the tool I’m showing you today applies to both cryptography and steganography.