Private Function GenerateHash(ByVal SourceText As String) As String
'Create an encoding object to ensure the encoding standard for the source text
Dim Ue As New UnicodeEncoding()
'Retrieve a byte array based on the source text
Dim ByteSourceText() As Byte = Ue.GetBytes(SourceTStext)
'Instantiate an MD5 Provider object
Dim Md5 As New MD5CryptoServiceProvider()
'Compute the hash value from the source
Dim ByteHash() As Byte = Md5.ComputeHash(ByteSourceText)
'And convert it to String format for return
Return Convert.ToBase64String(ByteHash)
End Function