Reddit, the so-called “front page of the internet”, is the latest in a series of popular websites to announce that it will be switching to HTTPS by default, protecting their visitors with secure connections.
Here is how the news was announced:
Nearly 1 year ago we gave you the ability to view reddit completely over SSL. Now we’re ready to enforce that everyone use a secure connection with reddit.
Please ensure that all of your scripts can perform all of their functions over HTTPS by June 29. At this time we will begin redirecting all site traffic to be over HTTPS and HTTP will no longer be available.
If this will be a problem for you, please let us know immediately.
Reddit switching to HTTPS is great news, and comes days after similar announcements from Wikipedia and Bing. Even the US Government’s CIO has announced that all .gov websites must be HTTPS-only by the end of 2016.
Hey, even the FBI website is up to speed – so they must be a fan of encryption too, right?
Every time a major website announces it is going HTTPS-only, it encourages other sites to make the same step.
And it’s important that as many sites as possible switch to HTTPS, because we need people to think of HTTPS secure web connections as being the default, not the exception.
As the EFF explains, even if you don’t shop or share personal information with a website, it can stop network providers from easily spying on your reading habits, censoring content or even injecting malware.
Sadly, there are still websites out there which haven’t quite got the message yet.
But hopefully they’ll see the light soon, eh?
An encrypted web is a safer web.
Maybe someone like Graham Cluely needs to remind the media there and start a shaming campaign. Tell them,"look at what happened to the US government"
"GCHQ could be next,or are already hacked and just don't know it yet" or start a vicious rumours campaign to that effect (-:
Maybe it's because I'm not a Brit, but I get confused every time GC mentions the GCHQ in the GCHQ newsletter or articles referenced therein. When I initially subscribed, it took me at least a couple months to figure out what was going on.
'HTTPS-Everywhere' is a great add-on for both Firefox and Chrome, produced by the EFF.
What is the monetary cost for a company to encrypt its web connection?