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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T07:18:58+00:00

If I don’t want to store user emails in plain text in the database,

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If I don’t want to store user emails in plain text in the database, but need them for running look-ups, is there a way to both encrypt (two-way so the content can be retrieved) and easily look up the value?

EDIT Would storing two columns, one encrypted for display and one hashed for lookup work?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    MySQL has aes_encrypt() and aes_decrypt() for this sort of thing, but then you’re still passing the encryption key in-the-clear, which means you might as well just be passing around the email addresses in-the-clear.

    The basic method would be something like:

    SELECT ...
FROM yourtable
WHERE encrypted_email = AES_ENCRYPT('someone@example.com', 'crypt key here');

    but again, you’d not be gaining any security since you’re sending the key each time.

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