Google Will Soon Let You Know By Default When Websites Are Unencrypted (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Permanent changes are planned for future Google Chrome releases, which will add a big shiny red cross in the URL bar if the website you're accessing is not using HTTPS. Google says it is planning to add this to Chrome by the end of 2016, after one of its developers proposed the idea back in December 2014. Many have argued that the web is predominantly unencrypted, so they're displaying a persistent and ambiguous error message for a large portion of the Internet. Since unencrypted content is not an error state, the Chrome team should use alternate iconography, because the default error message this will just confuse average people, and it will encourage error blindness.

Comments

Re:Not Sure What the HTTPS Hooplah is all about

[lgw]

HTTPs only encrypts the contents of what you are retrieving, not the location (URL) that you are retrieving it from. Seems rather pointless to push it everywhere. It only has a purpose when the user and/or server want to exchange secret payloads (e.g. credit card numbers).

I'd prefer my employer didn't know the contents of what I post to Slashdot. You can extend this to just about any forum where ideas are exchanged.

Re: Not Sure What the HTTPS Hooplah is all about

[Anonymous Coward]

Get back to work.

Wait...

[RJFerret]

So we used to have a simple system, see http:/// on the URL bar, or see https:/// on the bar.

Then some idiot got the bright idea of hiding the start of the URL, so users could be ignorant or infuriated.

Now they are going to use another symbol to indicate the lack of an "s"?

Have I really got this right?

(Hopefully in the future the symbol will be clarified by replacing it with a sequence of letters.)

Re:Wait...

[XanC]

What we've learned is that not all HTTPS are created equal. There could be insecure ciphers, mixed content, insecure signatures, vulnerabilities, what have you. Just looking for the "s" isn't enough. It's a very good thing that the browsers, which can look at all the factors, are giving better hints about whether a connection is trustworthy.

Re:Wait...

[JesseMcDonald]

So we used to have a simple system, see http:/// on the URL bar, or see https:/// on the bar.

Only http:/// is hidden, so users can still look for https:///. In fact, the difference is even more obvious than before: instead of just one missing letter, the entire protocol field indicates whether the connection is encrypted.

Re:Good

[roman_mir]

That's not my point, FF doesn't just warn people that the certificate is self signed, it actively tries to impress upon the user that the https connection with a self signed certificate is worse than a plain text http connection, because THAT is what a user compares his experiences to, not to another https site but to plain http.

My position on this is that FF goes to great length to make it seem that an https connection with a self signed certificate is less secure than http, while that is categorically untrue, it is at least AS secure as http. AFAIC CAs are not trustworthy themselves, https is broken, if you think your https session is really secure because it is signed by some 'authority', that's an interesting mental exercise.

Removing gigantic multi-screen warnings with insane messages about self signed certificates would help to increase overall security on the Internet by making it possible for people to use self signed certificates without making it look like self signed certs are a plague while not making the same types of accusations against plain http (which many sites also use!!! to transfer passwords).

Re:Not Sure What the HTTPS Hooplah is all about

[fahrbot-bot]

Ah right, seems I was wrong.

Oh my God. Someone on /. (simply) admits he/she was wrong.

Thank you, dear poster. I can die now, to be whisked off to either a warn Heaven or very cold Hell.