Gravatar in C# - creating the hash

gistfile1.cs

using System.Security.Cryptography;

/// Hashes an email with MD5.  Suitable for use with Gravatar profile
/// image urls
public static string HashEmailForGravatar(string email)
{
    // Create a new instance of the MD5CryptoServiceProvider object.  
    MD5 md5Hasher = MD5.Create();
 
    // Convert the input string to a byte array and compute the hash.  
    byte[] data = md5Hasher.ComputeHash(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(email));
 
    // Create a new Stringbuilder to collect the bytes  
    // and create a string.  
    StringBuilder sBuilder = new StringBuilder();
 
    // Loop through each byte of the hashed data  
    // and format each one as a hexadecimal string.  
    for(int i = 0; i < data.Length; i++)
    {
        sBuilder.Append(data[i].ToString("x2"));
    }
 
    return sBuilder.ToString();  // Return the hexadecimal string. 
}

md5Hasher is IDisposable, so I would also recommend using to avoid leaks.