Shopping online: Is plastic money really safe?

Congratulations! You are a proud owner of Aegis Defenders!

And you swiped your first credit card!

Have you ever wondered, what happens when you swipe that card? 

Are the numbers on your credit card just numbers at random?

Well, the good news is that your online transactions are absolutely secure.

Thank GOD? Well, I would say, thank PRIME NUMBERS!

Yes! The same Prime Numbers that can be divided only by 1 and themselves.

Let’s understand what makes these Prime numbers so unique? 

You would be familiar with this image given below:

The numbers that are not shaded are whole numbers. All the whole numbers can be expressed as a product of primes. For example, let’s see what a factor tree looks like:

This rule is called the prime factorization rule - the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. So, if we try to pull apart any whole number, we will eventually be left only with primes.

Here, the factor tree showed a two-digit number(48), but imagine if we took a number with 200 digits? It would perhaps take a lifetime to break the number down to prime factors.

It is this functional limit of NOT being able to break multiple digit numbers into prime factors that make it absolutely essential to modern computer security. 

So, the unique numerical properties of prime numbers are the reason you can shop online.

In a way, the security of our online transactions relies on the limitations of our understanding of Prime numbers.

So, go ahead and make the best of all the online offers on Amazon! 

Shop without care; you have the unshakeable and undivided security of Prime Numbers!