More than half of all web pages are now encrypted using Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (HTTPS) against hijacking, eavesdropping, cookie stealing and censorship, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report.
Tracing the usage of the standard HTTPS encryption by users, Google and Mozilla confirmed at least 50 per cent of the internet traffic from their browsers to be protected.
According to results from Mozilla Telemetry data-sharing program, 51.3 per cent of web page that loads on Firefox use HTTPS. Similarly, Google’ Chromes figures on HTTPS usage shows over 50 per cent of all pages are protected across all operating systems, including Windows, iOS, Mac, and Android.
EFF and other privacy advocated have been pushing the usage of encrypted protocol to most mainstream web browsers since years now, but the growth rate is slow, and “we are still halfway to encrypting the entire web.”
Meanwhile, EFF is providing HTTPS Everywhere browser extension, which will allow browsers use encrypted HTTPS wherever possible.
EFF explained, “Some websites offer inconsistent support for HTTPS, use unencrypted HTTPS as a default, or link from secure HTTPS pages to unencrypted HTTPS pages. HTTPS Everywhere fixes these problems by rewriting requests to these sites to HTTPS, automatically activating encryption and HTTPS protection that might otherwise slip through the cracks.”
"Our goal is a universally encrypted web that makes a tool like HTTPS Everywhere redundant," EFF researcher Gennie Gebhart wrote in a blog post.
