>It has been a while since I had to do this but I am wondering what VFP developers are using now to encrypt a chain of characters.
Chilkat Software have a suite of tools for a range of dev-platforms. They have a very extensive encryption and encoding library as well:
http://www.chilkatsoft.com/Great products, good support, good price.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King, Jr.