Senator Schumer Says Websites Should Default To HTTPS

There are plenty of websites where it absolutely makes sense for the default to be https, rather than http as the protocol (if you don’t know — and you should — https encrypts the traffic, while http does not). Most banks and such already use https, but plenty of sites that don’t involve financial institutions do not. Even sites like Google’s Gmail only recently switched over to defaulting to https. Still, it’s a bit of a surprise to see Senator Chuck Schumer announcing that major websites should switch to https, and it makes me wonder if he’s preparing legislation on that. I’m not so sure that we want a law mandating https.

Separately, he seems to indicate that the lack of encryption with http is a “security flaw” that only really got attention in 2007. That’s not quite true. I mean it’s been well known that http isn’t encrypted for much, much longer than that. And it’s not so much a “flaw” as the basic way that http was designed. And, of course, whether or not websites use https, you can protect yourself with VPN encryption software or services, but it doesn’t seem like Schumer wants to mandate that…

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story





This entry was posted in Syndicated. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.