One of the things to know when surfing the internet, a notion that you absolutely must know is the difference between http and https . People who are on the internet hardly notice this suffix which is in front of all internet addresses, that http which is no longer written.
However, when you go to websites that deal with sensitive data or money transactions, that http in the URL, in front of the name of the site in the address bar, becomes https .
This means that the connection to that website is encrypted and protected by a digital certificate, so no one, from the outside, can see what I am doing on that site and nobody can intercept the data exchanged on that site such as names, passwords or numbers of credit cards.
On a bank site, in an online store and in sites such as PayPal, such as Ebay or Poste Italiane, when you log in, on all the pages you visit afterwards, the addresses of the bar at the top begin with https.
As banking sites always write in the instructions for use to prevent data theft, it must be ensured that https is present and that it is not http.
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If you think that today even sites like Google, Gmail, Twitter and Faceboo k have enabled secure connection, it is clear that setting the browser to go necessarily in https, guarantees greater security of web browsing and also a clever way to get into sites, sometimes, blocked.
Returning to the meaning of https, that is Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer, I refer to the detailed explanation of Wikipedia.
Just know that, without https connection, you could even sniff Facebook passwords and enter other people's accounts!
What I want to get into this article is to force the browser to enter websites, when possible, in https instead of http .
Going in an encrypted and protected connection on the websites of online banks and in Ecommerce stores is mandatory but also on sites such as Facebook, in addition to guaranteeing access, it allows you to avoid the risk of password and data theft.
With https, not even the network provider can "see" what a user is doing on a site.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, famous for the TOR project (see article on how to surf anonymously on the internet) have launched an add-on for the Firefox browser and for Chrome which automatically switches to the encrypted connection, when possible.
This extension is preconfigured with websites such as PayPal, Twitter, Facebook, Google search and other American sites.
When you visit one of these, there is an automatic redirect to the secure connection: for example if you go to //www.facebook.com you go directly to //www.facebook.com.
The extension for Firefox and Chrome is called HTTPS Everywhere or https everywhere .
If you go to the plugin options (Tools, Add-ons, httpsEverywhere), you can enable automatic redirection for all or just some of the sites listed.
The nice thing is that you can add other websites and, therefore, also the Italian sites, those of banks, online stores or others that support secure connection.
To force other sites to https you must go to the user folder on Windows (for Firefox in Windows 7 it is
C: \ Users \ user \ AppData \ Roaming \ Mozilla \ Firefox \ Profiles \ ppp.default \ HTTPSEverywhereUserRules ) and add, within it, an .xml file for each new site.
For example, to add poste.it you open a new text document, you call it poste.xml (not poste.txt) and you write in it:
Then you save the file, close and restart Firefox.
To learn more about how to add new sites to the rule to force the secure https connection, refer to the eff.org page.
For Google Chrome there are excellent extensions like SL KB Enforcer.
Note now that Facebook and Google are all protected in https.
I do not mean, however, that you should always try to surf in https, but you must underline the importance of this security protocol, every time you have to enter an account or credit card number on the internet or when you surf by others computer.
In this regard, I remember the article on how to protect access data and online bank account.
