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If the original numeric ID can be figured out from the sqid string, then what’s the point of the conversion?

The point is to make a long number more human-friendly. But I don't get why these are non-sequential then.

Unless we are talking about very long numbers, surely the numbers are easier for people to deal with, say over the phone, etc?

I was going to say it's for very long numbers, but I tried an example, and 123645634 becomes ARsz1pHw789c7ESzhy. The output is actually longer, and more complicated.

Looks like it uses a hash. I was expecting it to just convert the base except with something to skip profanity, which would give you something much shorter going base 10 to base ~36. Tbh I don't see why it's like this.

The original numeric ID(s) can only be decoded if you know the original alphabet that was used for encoding.

I wouldn't bank on that information not getting out. It may even be easy to reverse-engineer. Sqid says not to use it this way.

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