Most users on the web are not at all concerned about security whether due to ignorance, laziness  or any other reason, good websites try their best to make their websites and the user interaction through them as much secure as possible. Enabling HTTPS connection while transmitting data over web is one such security measure. Even though many of you will feel its just an additional “S”, but this additional “S” in your connection adds a whole new dimension to your security as it makes it difficult for anyone to sniff  out what you’re doing.

As per Wikipedia

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems. HTTPS should not be confused with Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) specified in RFC 2660

Twitter has added this feature few days back by which you can use HTTPS everytime you use twitter. This feature is not enabled by default and you need to enable it in your account settings. Just browse to your twitter account >> Settings and there you will see a option to “Always use HTTPS“. Just select that setting and save it.

If you are a firefox user and want to enable HTTPS for every website that supports it, then you can use a Firefox Addon “HTTPS Everywhere“  which encrypts your communications with a number of major websites. The websites which are currently supported by this addon are:

  • Google Search
  • Wikipedia
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • bit.ly
  • GMX
  • WordPress.com blogs
  • The New York Times
  • The Washington Post
  • Paypal
  • EFF
  • Tor
  • Ixquick
  • and many other sites!

Hopefully more websites will start supporting HTTPS so that we can have a more secure internet and better browsing experience.