Encrypted passwords for Mail and Mysql

[SniperSister]

I just converted my plaintext password into an md5 hash and postfix is working quite well...so at least postfix should work without any problems.

The question "Why encrypting those passwords" is very easy to answer: Most of the people are using the same password for their Bank-Account, their Ebay-Account, their Mailaccount etc...
So when somebody gets access to the database, he can read out all customers passwords - and with a bit luck - he gets access to their bank or mail accounts.

The advantage of md5 is that you can't reconvert it into a plaintext password - it's more or less worthless for a hacker. You can use it to authenticate your customers by comparing the md5 hash of the entered password with the md5 hash stored in the database.