Base64 Decoder is an online tool that decode Base64-encoded text strings. The term Base64 refers to a specific MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) content transfer encoding. It is also used as a generic term for any similar encoding scheme that encodes binary data by treating it numerically and translating it into a base 64 representation. The particular choice of base is due to the history of character set encoding: one can choose a set of 64 characters that is both part of the subset common to most encodings, and also printable. This combination leaves the data unlikely to be modified in transit through systems, such as email, which were traditionally not 8-bit clean.

Base64 can be used in a variety of contexts:

• Evolution and Thunderbird use Base64 to obfuscate e-mail passwords[1]
• Base64 can be used to transmit and store text that might otherwise cause delimiter collision
• Base64 is often used as a quick but insecure shortcut to obscure secrets without incurring the overhead of cryptographic key management
• Base64 is used to store passwords encrypted with crypt in the /etc/passwd
• Spammers use Base64 to evade basic anti-spamming tools, which often do not decode Base64 and therefore cannot detect keywords in encoded messages.
• Base64 is used to encode character strings in LDIF files
• Base64 is often used to embed binary data in an XML file
• Base64 is used to encode binary files such as images within scripts, to avoid depending on external files.
• The data URI scheme can use Base64 to represent files. For instance, background images can be specified in a CSS stylesheet file as data: URIs, instead of being supplied in separate image files.

Online Base64 Decoder Information:

• Purpose of this Tool : Base64 Decoding
• Intended Audience : Webmasters, Web Developers, Programmers

External Resources:

• Base64
• Content-Transfer-Encoding
• Binary-to-text encoding