Wikipedia article
Sites like twitter do not use https:// by default and this can be a major problem. However, instead of typing in https://twitter.com all the time, which can be a pain, you can get an extension for your browser that automatically redirects you to the secure version of a site.
For Chrome, there is https everywhere (what I am using).
For Firefox, you can get Force TLS, which does the same thing as the one for Chrome.
For IE, well... yeah. Nothing. Not really anyways. Even if there was some toolbar from yahoo with free smileys that did use https for everything, it would probably do a lot more things that you would want it to. If you do have a good extension that does this, leave a comment.
Some great sites like gmail, set the login page to be https by default, so you never even have to worry about it.
More notes on https:
You probably noticed that Chrome had https everywhere while Firefox had Force TLS. However, https, SSL encryption, and TLS are all synonymous.
- The 's' in https stand for secure
- TLS stands for Transport Layer Security
- SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer
- SSL was originally developed by Netscape.
- SSL 1.0 was never released to the public
Important facts:
- People can steal your password if you are not using any encryption
- People can steal your password in seconds if you are on the same network as them and do not use https
- Even if you use https, people can get your password through other means. Get a strong password.
Leave a comment! (Did you already know about this, do you have better extensions you would like to share, was my short article understandable?)
