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I received an email from them - the password was included in the email, in plaintext.

So I don't know exactly what they mean, but it's at best symmetric encryption.

I've got an account with them under two different email addresses, and have gone through the password change process with both. In neither case did I receive an email with my password in it.

Symmetric Encryption means both sides can access the data. It's different from using a hash (like MD5 or the stronger SHA series) in that it can be reversed given the key.

Ouch... that's oversimplified... Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric-key_algorithm http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~mihir/cse207/w-se.pdf

By encrypted they probably mean they applied the most potent of all cryptographic techniques: base64 encoding!

It would be hilarious if this is what it was and hackers couldn't figure it out and abandoned the hack because they're trying all these advanced techniques and none of it is working.

You must mean UTF-8 encryption

rot13