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Google Offers Encrypted Web Search Option
alphadogg writes "People who want to shield their use of Google's Web search engine from network snoops now have the option of encrypting the session with SSL protection. In the case of Google search, SSL will protect the transmission of search queries entered by users and the search results returned by Google servers. Google began rolling out the encrypted version of its Web search engine on Friday. 'We think users will appreciate this new option for searching. It's a helpful addition to users' online privacy and security, and we'll continue to add encryption support for more search offerings,' wrote Evan Roseman, a Google software engineer, in an official blog post."
In other words, you still trade your privacy for the service provided by Google; the difference is the trade being less likely to be interrupted now.
Google has never shown any tendency towards abuse of my private data. My government, on the other hand, has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to break its own laws whenever it's convenient for any of their actual constituents, i.e. corporations. I'm much more worried about my government watching my search history than google doing it. Of course, they'll give that information to my government any old time, but that's not the same thing as having it continually logged where it can fire off triggers.
No, I'm not doing anything that I feel my government would attack me for. But then, I'm not doing anything google would attack me for, either. Google continually stands in opposition to the corporations that I am concerned about. The enemy of my enemy may or may not be my friend, but odds are better than if he's my enemy's friend. Contrarily, much of what the U.S. government does makes it the enemy of any right-thinking citizen, where right-thinking is defined as "freedom-loving". (I may have a bias, but I certainly don't hide it.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This could be an interesting development for Google's efforts in China. If the traffic between google and the client is encrypted then the firewall of China *shouldn't* be able to analyse the search results coming back. The only option for China might be to block Google SSL completely but that might be a bit too risky politically.
As a matter of course, we should use SSL on all connections. In some rare cases the computation may be too much of a burden, but in the vast majority of situations it's trivial and there's no reason not to do it.
IMO, the only reason we don't do it more is because the way browsers handle self-signed certificates is broken.
There's no reason for a browser to throw up nasty error dialogs when it encounters a self-signed certificate. Instead, browsers should silently accept such certificates and record the public key fingerprint. Browsers shouldn't turn on the lock icon when using a self-signed cert, or do anything else to make the user think they're browsing on a secure connection, because they're really not, but they should go ahead and encrypt the traffic.
Not only would that provide some measure of security against eavesdropping, but it would also assist with detection of phishing attacks. Browsers could and should throw up nasty warnings/errors when connecting to a site whose certificate has inexplicably changed. This is similar to how SSH handles trust of server keys, a system that works very well in practice.
Regarding this move by Google, I think it's great. I applauded their decision to make Gmail and Google Apps HTTPS-only, and providing the option for Google Search is great, too. Hopefully they'll eventually go to HTTPS-only for search as well. Their page volumes are such that they'll have to seriously consider the impact of the encryption overhead, but I think they'll get there.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes, but Scroogle has recently been shut down by Google, so this is their alternative.
http://www.scroogle.org/scrapen8.html - well, it certainly didn't take much research to work out that isn't true.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
It's an enhancement that isn't a disadvantage for the user, so we should welcome it.
And if it also prevents man in the middle hacking of web pages it's a good thing.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Don't care if it is. I don't know why all of our internet traffic these days isn't encrypted. Good job Google for stepping up even on the simplest of things.
Agreed, we all know that in a free market economy
Where?
It's what we'd all do if given the chance.
Speak for yourself.
I see this also useful against Phorm, and other in-transit ad-insertion mechanisms.
All and all, the good guys benefit here. Google doesn't have ISPs modifying their ads in transit, replacing their ads with their own. The user gets search results that have not been tampered with (where a site for product "A" takes you to a different company, or associate IDs are replaced so different parties get credit for ad responses), and have potentially malicious ads thrown in. ISPs can't passively log the connection and sell the data (just like the parent said.)
It is apparent that you don't like Google. That's fine. However, that is beside the point. What is important is that the connection between the Google user and Google is only belonging to those two. A third party can slow down or block the SSL transaction, but unless they jack a root CA, compromise one of the endpoints, or break one of the encryption algorithms, they are not going to be seeing what is going on.
To reiterate: Regardless of opinions of Google, this is a good thing. A search query with Google is my business and Google's business. Not the ISP's, not Phorm's, not a MITM watching the traffic go by. I'm sure as time goes on, less scrupulous ISPs will be slavering over ad revenue from in-transit ads.
actually, your browser will do this for you anyway:
RFC 2616, 15.1.3:
Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP request if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol.
But from the PoV of storage and datamining, it's as much Google's business as it is Phorm's.
Uhm, no it isn't. You went to google to do a search. You didn't go anywhere else. Therefore, it isn't anyone else's business. And if you don't want google to have your search data, you can opt out of that by not using them at all. Phorm isn't even in the equation, they are interlopers. Encrypting the traffic cuts those types out completely. That way you only have Google to worry about.