Masked Authenticated Messaging means:
- The Message is encrypted (Masked)
- The message is confirmed to be coming from the device (Authenticated)
- A continuous message stream is created on the Tangle and will carry on until the device stops publishing the data (Messaging)
Masked Authenticated Messaging is a IXI module built on top of IOTA that makes it possible to send messages fully encrypted from authenticated parties.
In a MAM stream or message chain, every message holds a reference to the next message.
I highly recommend that you read the following post by ABmushi. His explanation of the MAM Module is on point and easily explained with various analogies that make it easy to wrap your head around the technology.
IOTA: MAM Eloquently Explained
MAM, Masked Authenticated Message, is one of the most remarkable features of IOTA. Let us speculate the world full of small IoT devices, where their small jobs, flow of microscopic data, and nano-payments come and go all over the globe.
IOTA, whose goal is to become the very fundamental layer of such society, is the most provident project of the time that challenges looming paradigm shift. And MAM is its core driving force, which distinguishes IOTA from other distributed ledger by making data flow and transactions much cheaper, more secure and ubiquitous.
However, despite the fact that MAM is immensely important in IOTA and its future, since it is still under development stage, only limited amount of information is available to public with regard to its technical implementation.
This article reveals it in as comprehensible way as possible such that more people could wrap their head around this next technology.