Encrypting password fields

[Chris Kavanagh]

Hola list,

Many thanks to all those who helped with my question about the schema.  
Your kindness is sincerely appreciated.

I need to store passwords in my database, and I understand it's bad 
form to store them anywhere in a readable format (I remember reading 
once that if you call a company and ask for your password, and they can 
tell you, it's a bad sign).

Is the solution a BLOB column type, and when inserting records:

md5('somepassword')

...or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Kind regards,
CK.