What does “plain text” or “plaintext” mean?

The term “plain text” is often used state that data being transferred from one place to another is not encrypted and can be read by anyone. For example, if a you login to a website or service and the connection isn’t encrypted, the username and password you input would quite literally be transmitted in “plain text”.

If you’d like to learn more about encryption and why it’s important, we have a separate article regarding that.