Clarification
"A cryptographic hash algorithm converts data into a shortened "message digest" from which it is, ideally, impossible to recover the original information. "
Any decent cryptographic function can be described by the last part of this sentence, whereas cryptographic has algorithms are a special class of these. Can I suggest
"A cryptographic hash algorithm converts data into a shortened "message digest" such that it is not only extremely unlikely that different data will have identical digests, but that it would be computationally infeasible to create data that would yield some given digest.