HTTPS Everywhere

I recently heard about a new plugin which is being developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called 'HTTPS Everywhere'.

The website intro is quoted below.

"HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites.

Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site.

The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by rewriting all requests to these sites to HTTPS"

Do you think this is something you would use? I know there would be issues for using this system in filtered zones such as schools due to the secure nature of the connection.

If you have any reason to not use this extension; or something similar, I'd be interested to here your reasoning as to why.

Currently it's only developed for Firefox; but I'd assume at final release (or later in testing) versions for other browsers would be developed.

web firefox extensions https internet security eff

asked Jul 26 '10 at 12:27

swinnie
771●1●9●18

edited Jul 26 '10 at 12:28

3 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

what it really sounds like to me is a proxy, or vpn in which case any number of people can have access to what you do online even still, the question is are they trust worthy?

answered Jul 26 '10 at 12:47

trueb
15.0k●49●99●257

HTTPS sets up a secure and encrypted tunnel directly between you and the remote server.

Far more secure than regular HTTP, where any eavesdropper can see exactly what you're sending.

(Jul 26 '10 at 15:28) Leapo

It's not a proxy; from my understanding. The plugin simply ensures that any website that is in a 'white list' that has https functionality it ensures that the address that is requested is prefixed with https rather than http. I guess the 'white list' will grow overtime as more websites are suggested and checked for https functionality.

The other nice thing which seems they're doing is that they will add a 'custom user' feature for users to add websites that they want to use in https mode, where https is present; creating secure connections.

answered Jul 26 '10 at 12:50

swinnie
771●1●9●18

0	I'm using the plugin now just for peace of mind, though I had to turn it off for Google because the SSL encrypted Google homepage doesn't give easy access to other Google searches or services. answered Jul 26 '10 at 15:29 Leapo 2.2k●9●22●46

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