What Is HTTPS, and Why Should I Care?

Have you ever questioned whether the website you’re browsing is safe, and what is HTTPS role in securing the website? Whenever you visit a website take look at the website’s address link, if it has HTTPS at the beginning, it is then considered to be a secure website. We’ll show you how crucial it is to have a secure website and why browsers are pushing for websites to be more secure in this section.

In HTTPS, HTTP stands for “hypertext transfer protocol” and as you may have guessed ‘S’ stands for Secure, which these days is in high demand as people are conscious about their private data being jeopardized.

Why HTTP puts you at risk!!

If you visit an HTTP website, your browser will connect to that IP address, assuming it to be the original server. This will be of concern because the browser won’t check to see whether that site is secure or not, and if you are using that website for something important then an eavesdropper( a hacker) who is connected to the same Wi-Fi connection may tap into your computer and can get a hold of all the data that is being transferred or received via your computer.

What is HTTPS, and how does HTTPS encryption protect you?

If you’re using the browser for something crucial, such as making a bank transaction, You should make sure that the website address is HTTPS since it shows that your browser has verified the site (the bank’s website address)and the website has a security certificate which is authorized by a legitimate certificate authority.

This helps you have a secure browsing experience as other people will not have the ability to access your information on the internet. Internet browsers have also become vigilant about counterfeit websites and have taken the initiative to set the original websites as their default.

Why browsers are pushing websites to change to HTTPS?

Internet providers have the ability to go through all the data that you are using if you are using an HTTP website, and they can also sell your data to companies that use it for ads. The internet provider does not have the ability to access your data if you are using an HTTPS website, as it will be locked. All the standard designs are required to have HTTPS encryption as it is more secure and can support the new HTTP/2 which is supported by all major web browsers. HTTP/2 has features like adding compression and pipelining which help the web pages to load faster. This later encryption is being prioritized as it is compatible only with HTTPS.

This has also driven browsers such as Google to penalize websites that use HTTP encryption and intend to call out those websites as unsafe and inconsiderate about consumers’ private data.

How to check whether the website is safe or not?

Last but not least you need to learn, how you can check whether the website that you are using is safe. You can do this by checking the address of the website in the address bar and see if it has “https://”. If yes the website is safe to use. For example, https://www.halfofthe.com is completely safe.

You can also find a lock icon beside the address bar if the website’s address contains “https://” in most browsers to see how safe it is.

As the amount of cyberattacks rises every day, we recommend that you never wait to improve your browser security and that you must be watchful when conducting sensitive activities on your browser.