Ioncube provides the ability for software developers to encode or encrypt their files so that their work cannot be easily copied and redistributed without their knowledge. In order for website files to run, the ioncube loaders must be installed with the files so that they can be decoded and seen by a web browser. If the correct loader files are not present, then the files cannot be read (or decrypted).

The reason that we had to start using Ioncube to encrypt our files is that we found some websites were making copies of our software freely available. While it flatters us that the popularity of our work continues to increase, it also frustrates us to know that there are people using stolen copies of 68 Classifieds. It's not just that we were losing money (which, theoretically, we were) but it was unfair to you, the customer, who went through the proper steps to obtain the script.