cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3301227
Chrome will be experimenting with defaulting to https:// if the site supports it, even when an http:// link is used and will warn about downloads from insecure sources for “high-risk files” (example given is an exe). They’re also planning on enabling it by default for Incognito Mode and “sites that Chrome knows you typically access over HTTPS”.
Don’t use chromium based browsers.
Is this just general advice? If so, I agree, but if it’s specific to this, what’s the problem you see with it?
Google has shown that they’re going to go the Microsoft strategy with Browser control. So long as they have majority control, that means they can be as anti-user as they would like, but since everything is downstream of chromium, everyone just basically accepts it. Everything from Google AMP (which was their attempt to take over the web in whole), to their new “Web Integrity API” which aims to lock out any competitors.
Agreed, but to clarify, I was asking if there was an issue with this specific change (always using https if it’s available even if the URL uses http), as it does seem to be a positive that makes me wonder why it’s only happening now.
It is general advice, but https should have been the default for a good while.
Chrome didn’t already default to https? Why?
It does if you just type in something like wikipedia.org . This most recent change they’re working on is so that a link on a page to:
http://wikipedia.org will get redirected to https://wikipedia.org if the site supports it.
This will fix a bunch of old links that are still floating around on various sites, forums, etc and keep people on https, instead of doing the https -> http -> https redirect bouncing around that can happen now.
Ah, that’s a great feature. Hope this comes to Brave soon.
I disagree. While in practice, this is often the same website, it is a different protocol and a different port. It just happens to use the same DNS address. You’re explicitly giving your browser a FQDN, and it is ignoring it and doing something else.
I hope this feature can be disabled. Google has been ignoring the W3C and has shipped proprietary, insecure features in their chromium engine for a while now, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they made it permanent 🤷
What’s the difference between the two?
I’m not sure which thing you’re referring to.
If it’s between http and https, the s stands for secure and the connection to the server is authenticated and encrypted.
Was curious, thanks