In an effort to make a better secure online world for netizens, Google has been shepherding websites to move to HTTPS secure connection.
In February this year, Google gave a notice to developers to move their websites to the HTTPS secure connection, before the search engine embarks on shaming the unsecured websites. Well, that was a six months’ notice that expires today, (July 24).
Google is now set to roll out Chrome v.68 for desktops today. And from today, going forward, Chrome users visiting unencrypted sites will be given a big warning, letting them know the site(s) do not use HTTPS encryption.
You might recall Google had already embarked on this route from as early as January 2017, with the release of Chrome v.56. However, the earlier implementation was only limited to sites that required critical personal information from the users such as credit card details. But with Chrome v.68, the omnibox at the top will show the ‘not secure’ label for all HTTP sites.
The now conspicuous ‘not secure’ label will replace the previous ‘i‘ that was being used to let the user know they’re browsing unencrypted site and should not give out any critical information. This move will likely push webmasters to prefer HTPPS over HTTP.
Benefit to the End User
As a user, this move by Google will likely arm-twist webmasters who have not been keen on securing your data, move to the encrypted HTTPS. That means all the data that a HTTPS secured sites will be encrypted by default. A move that will go a long way toward securing your online activities from eavesdroppers, and hackers. Especially when you are on a public network.
Though at the time of writing this article, Chrome v.68 had not yet been rolled out, but Google has already issued out its Enterprise Release Notes, which reads in parts:
“For the past several years, we’ve advocated that sites adopt HTTPS encryption for greater security. Within the last year, we’ve also helped users by marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as ‘not secure.’ Beginning in July 2018 with the released of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as ‘not secure.’
