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Hi i recently found that JSON is been used in many areas. In COMET techniques and as well as in Google instant. Wiki says that:

JSON (an acronym for JavaScript Object Notation pronounced /ˈdʒeɪsən/) is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange....

I was shocked after seeing the word's human-readable data interchange, and I was thinking: since the whole internet is using techniques to increase their security, then why such JSON techniques should be used to exchange data's, since any human eye can see and can read too?

Or else, JSON is very secure, then how?

And if my thought is incorrect then correct me.

Matteo Italia
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Ant's
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2 Answers2

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If a binary format were used, it wouldn't provide any advantage in security (since it would still be machine-readable and open-spec'd - otherwise it wouldn't have any use for information exchange), and it would make debugging more complicated.

Security is not achieved by the obscurity of interchange formats, but with cryptography. Once you are on an SSL tunnel, you can send the data in whatever format you like most - JSON included - and it will be secure.

Notice that the same applies to any other communication on the web: even HTML is "almost" human readable, and still it's used even for very private communications (e.g. home banking, ...) by encrypting it while it's on the untrusted path with HTTPS.

Matteo Italia
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JSON data is used to put information on a web page. It is human-readable because Web pages are meant to be readable by humans. Web pages are also, by their nature, not secure on the client side, so developers who need to hide certain information either process that on the server or use a secure session.

Robusto
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