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Google wants to make Chrome safer by explicitly marking HTTP sites as “not secure”

From January 2017 Google Chrome will start marking websites using an HTTP connection as “not secure”.

This comes as part the goal Google has to make using the web a more secure experience. Initially, only sites that transmit passwords and credit card information over an HTTP connection will be labeled as not secure.

A website using an HTTP connection is vulnerable to attack and malicious individuals could grab credit card numbers and personal information in transit.

There also exists the potential for an attacker to push malware onto a user hoping to download a legitimate piece of software according to Tom’s Hardware.

Google has been encouraging websites to move to HTTPS (the secured instance of HTTP) for a while now using ranking boosts and automatic indexing of HTTPS pages as an incentive.

This labeling of websites will extend to websites visited in Chrome’s “Incognito Mode”, where users often expect greater privacy measures to be enforced.

As a visual aid, Google will use a red triangle icon in place of the “i” in the omni-bar, as well as a “Not secure” label to alert users to any potential dangers.

These updates will be coming to Chrome in January so in the mean time users will still have to double check that the site they are accessing is using a secure connection.

Speaking frankly, this is a habit that we all should have by now given the plague of threats that lurk in the corridors of the internet, but well done Google for taking the initiative to start pointing out to users that they might not be safe.

[Via – Tom’s Hardware] [Image – CC BY 2.0 David Bleasdale]

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