[Sami_Lehtinen]

I consider passwords as random blobs of bytes. Everyone says that hashing is important but I don't see any real benefit of it. If I hash random 128 bits result is random 128 bits.

[SoftwareMaven]

It's important because if somebody gets your database, if you haven't hashed, they have everybody's passwords, and those passwords are often reused many times at many sites. Hashing at least puts a step between stealing your table and knowing everybody's passwords (a mathematically hard step for good passwords).

Also, please let me know what sites you manage so I know where my data is not valued.