Private Key

## What is a Private Key A Private Key is only one half of the package, there is also the [[Public Key]] To use this technology you need to have both parts. The Private Key is the part that you must keep secret and not reveal to anyone. While the public key you can share with the world, the more people that have your public key the better.
## How to use a Public and Private Key To give an example of how to use a key pair. Let's say that you want to send me a secret message on the hive blockchain and you want to make sure that only I can read it. - First, you need to get hold of my public key - Then write your message - Encrypt the message with my public key - send the message The fact that you have used my public key to encode the message means that like a lock and a key, only my [[Private Key]] can decode the message. This private key is only held by me so only I can decode it. ## Private Key Security In this simple example of sending a message. Rest assured your content is secure even if someone else gets access to the message. Such as email admins snooping on messages, he will not be able to make sense of it as it has been encoded. Only the holder of the [[Private Key]] can decode the message. ## Other Uses On Hive There are many other examples of using this key pair technology. On Hive we use our private posting key to sign messages that we post to the blockchain. We use our private [[Active Key]] to sign financial transactions, and we have a private [[Memo Key]] to sign messages. ## Related Articles [[Public key]] [[Private key]] [[Active key]] [[Memo key]]