Google announced today that, starting in July, their Chrome browser will display “Not secure” for all HTTP sites.  I’ll explain what it means to you.

What does this mean?

They’re just changing what you see in the address bar when you go to a non-HTTPS site.  Look back at my earlier post about safe browsing to learn more about how that works.  They will change from the neutral-looking icon to a red, nasty-looking warning that says “Not secure”.  It means that the data from the page isn’t encrypted as it travels over the internet.

Why are they doing this?

They have been pushing websites over the past few years to adopt the more secure HTTPS, which encrypts data during transit.  Securing web traffic this way helps all of us.  Most sites already use HTTPS.  This will probably nudge most of the remaining sites to also switch to HTTPS.  More importantly, it will make it more obvious to you and others to avoid entering any personal information on the sites still using only HTTP.