Google has been trying to nudge web developers to adopt HTTPS encryption, it has taken several steps over the years to give them time to make the switch. The company started down-ranking unencrypted sites in 2015 and in January last year, it started marking HTTP pages that collected passwords or credit cards as non-secure. It was the start of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure and that plan is going to be implemented later this year.
HTTPS encryption prevents man-in-the-middle threats, not allowing the traffic between your browser and the website you’re visiting to be eavesdropped on. Google today announced that with the release of Chrome 68, it’s going to start marking all HTTP sites as “not secure.” This is going to happen starting July 2018.
The company points out that developers have been transitioning their sites to HTTPS and that they made incredible progress last year. It mentions that over 68 percent of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected and so is over 78 percent of Chrome traffic on Chrome OS and Mac. 81 of the top 100 sites on the web are now using HTTPS by default.
Chrome version 68 is going to warn users about sites that don’t use HTTPS encryption with a “not secure” warning notification in the address bar.
Filed in . Read more about Chrome. Source: security.googleblog