Editing ROT13 (section)

== Net culture ==
Because of its utter unsuitability for real secrecy, ROT13 has become a catchphrase to refer to any conspicuously weak [[encryption]] scheme; a critic might claim that "56-bit [[Data Encryption Standard|DES]] is little better than ROT13 these days". In a play on real terms like "double DES" several terms cropped up with humorous intent:

* Double ROT13: applying ROT13 to an already ROT13-encrypted text restores the original [[plaintext]].
* ROT26: equivalent to no encryption at all.
* 2ROT13 was included in a spoof academic paper entitled "On the 2ROT13 Encryption Algorithm".<ref>{{Cite web |date=25 September 2004 |title=On the 2ROT13 Encryption Algorithm |url=http://www.pruefziffernberechnung.de/Originaldokumente/2rot13.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120415092223/http://www.pruefziffernberechnung.de/Originaldokumente/2rot13.pdf |archive-date=15 April 2012 |access-date=20 September 2007 |publisher=Prüfziffernberechnung in der Praxis}}</ref> 
* triple-ROT13: used jokingly in analogy with 3DES, it is equivalent to regular ROT13.
ROT13 jokes were popular on many [[newsgroup]] servers, like net.jokes as early as the 1980s.<ref name="jargon" />

The newsgroup alt.folklore.urban coined a word—''furrfu''—that was the ROT13 encoding of the frequently encoded utterance "[[:wikt:sheesh|sheesh]]". "<kbd>Furrfu</kbd>" evolved in mid-1992 as a response to postings repeating [[urban myth]]s on alt.folklore.urban, after some posters complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to [[newbie|newcomer]]s was being overused.<ref>{{Cite web |date=25 October 1995 |title=Furrfu |url=http://foldoc.org/furrfu |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714182645/http://foldoc.org/furrfu |archive-date=14 July 2014 |access-date=3 October 2016 |publisher=[[Foldoc]]}}</ref>

Using a [[search engine]] on public social networks, yields results for ROT13 in jokes to this day.{{cn|date=April 2025}}{{when|date=April 2025}}