Stego implements a form of steganography. Steganography is the process of hiding messages in files which appear to be something totally different, such as "innocent" images, sound, etc. !Stego hides the contents of a text file in a sprite file. When the sprite is viewed with !Paint, it looks like the sort of texture that might be used as a backdrop. On a separate page you can view examples of such sprites. Steganography may be useful if, for example, you want to exercise your basic human right of privacy but your employer, your ISP, or your government forbids the use of encryption or the transmission of certain types of material. Or you may want to hide the fact that you are using PGP because you or one of your correspondents lives in a police state which can put people in prison for refusing to reveal the contents of encrypted messages. !Stego makes it possible to hide a message whose presence is undetectable by anyone who does not know the correct passphrase.