It is just common practice for me to encrypt most data that goes into the database. First and foremost, for security. Privacy is important too. And also, encryp

It is just common practice for me to encrypt most data that goes into the database. First and foremost, for security. Privacy is important too. And also, encrypting data actually saves more bytes, as the encryption method I use outputs a pattern of random characters. While it can be long at times, it tends to eliminate special characters, periods, spaces, etc. So I'd think the database is more optimized by practicing data encryption. Also, if you think about all the major companies that have gotten hacked in the past, with sensitive data leaks, you have to wonder how that data was able to get breached and then deciphered. At least if that happens to you, you can at least make it harder for the hacker. And people know about these data breaches.. yet it doesn't stop them from using those products, but that is because those companies are huge. A small business cannot afford to have a data breach and expect its reputation to remain stable. Edit: The thing about data encryption is that for some methods, you can encrypt two strings so they end up being the exact same thing when encrypted. Then you compare that data for a match or an unmatch. It is just a more secure way of doing things. It is up to you on how you want to store your data. Databases do come with some protection themselves, but encrypting data is just one additional step for security.