I have a phpBB forum and when I go to the SQL I see that the passwords are funny numbers and letters. Is there a way for me to unmask them and see the passwords?
I don't think you are allowed to see the passwords, only to change them. If you could see the passwords, you could go to like paypal and see if their email and password works, and thats not right.
I believe they're MD5 encrypted, so no. There is no way to see them. (For exactly that reason). You could go back and recode it all to not use encryption, but that's a huge security risk, and a hell of a lot of work.