Why ``snake oil''? The term is used in many fields to denote something sold without consideration of its quality or its ability to fulfill its vendor's claims. This term originally applied to elixirs sold in traveling medicine shows. The salesmen . . .
Why ``snake oil''? The term is used in many fields to denote something sold without consideration of its quality or its ability to fulfill its vendor's claims. This term originally applied to elixirs sold in traveling medicine shows. The salesmen would claim their elixir would cure just about any ailment that a potential customer could have. Listening to the claims made by some crypto vendors, ``snake oil'' is a surprisingly apt name. Superficially, it is difficult to distinguish snake oil from the Real Thing: all encryption utilities produce garbled output. The purpose of this document is to present some simple ``red flags'' that can help you detect snake oil.

The link for this article located at RootPrompt is no longer available.