TL;DR: The PKZIP program is one of the more widely used archive/ compression programs on personal computers, and is used by most BBS's and ftp sites to compress their archives.
Abstract: The PKZIP program is one of the more widely used archive/ compression programs on personal computers. It also has many compatible variants on other computers, and is used by most BBS's and ftp sites to compress their archives. PKZIP provides a stream cipher which allows users to scramble files with variable length keys (passwords).