Improve Your Sign In Security With Https Everywhere
One of the things that Internet users can do to improve their sign in security is to make sure that the sites that they connect to is offering connections via https. Why is that important? Because it encrypts the data transfer between the user’s computer and the server they are connecting to.
This protects the traffic from network snooping, for instance on public computer networks, by the Internet Service Provider or the government, as well as from attempts to tamper with the data that is send and received. HTTPS does not conceal the site urls that you access in the browser on the other hand.
Some web services, like GMail for instance, enable https for all user connections. Other services offer https as an option that users need to enable in the settings or by using https instead of http when entering the web address.
While it is certainly possible to bookmark the https pages in the browser to always open the secure pages when available, it sometimes is better to use a program that turns http links into https links automatically.
Enter HTTPS Everywhere for the Firefox web browser. The free Firefox extension rewrites all requests to https on supported web services.
The developers note that HTTPS Everywhere works on on sites that support HTTPS connections. The extension cannot magically connect to a site via https if not supported by the web server.
HTTPS Everywhere depends entirely on the security features of the individual web sites that you use; it activates those security features, but it can’t create them if they don’t already exist. If you use a site not supported by HTTPS Everywhere or a site that provides some information in an insecure way, HTTPS Everywhere can’t provide additional protection for your use of that site. Please remember to check that a particular site’s security is working to the level you expect before sending or receiving confidential information, including passwords.
Firefox users can download and install the latest version of HTTPS Everywhere from the developer website.