As of a little over a month ago, the source code and titles of private user algorithms are now encrypted in the Quantopian application's database, using 256-bit AES CBC encryption.
Note that backtests that are shared in the forums are not encrypted there, though they do remain encrypted in the account data of the users who share them.
Encrypting the source code and titles of algorithms ensures that they cannot be accessed by the vendors we rely on for hosting our database and application infrastructure. Furthermore, the encryption provides a strong barrier to any attacker who might manage to compromise one of our servers. I mention that only as a theoretical possibility -- we have no reason to believe that any of our servers have been compromised, and we have both active and passive ongoing security measures in place to minimize the likelihood of that happening.
Please feel free to email us or post a comment below if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Jonathan Kamens
V.P. of Operations
Quantopian