Google Claims 64 Percent Of Chrome And Android Traffic Protected By HTTPS

Google has claimed that 64 percent of all the traffic through its Chrome browser and Android devices is now secured by the HTTPS communication standard.

The figure is up by 22 percent on last year, indicating that more websites and online service providers are moving away from the HTTP standard which does not employ an encrypted connection between a a PC or smartphone and a web server, unless a virtual private network (VPN) is being used.

Locking down

“It‘s only been a year, but HTTPS usage has already made some incredible progress,” Emily Schechter, Google’s Chrome security product manager said.

“HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before, and it enables both the best performance the web offers and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP.”

This switch from HTTP to HTTPS should not come as a surprise as Google has been quietly steering websites into adopting the more secure web protocol in incremental steps.

“About a year ago, we announced that we would begin marking all sites that are not encrypted with HTTPS as “not secure” in Chrome. We wanted to help people understand when the site they’re on is not secure, and at the same time, provide motivation to that site’s owner to improve the security of their site,” said Schechter.

“We knew this would take some time, and so we started by only marking pages without encryption that collect passwords and credit cards. In the next phase, we began showing the “not secure” warning in two additional situations: when people enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.”

Google is not alone in pushing websites ot adopt HTTPS, with Apple and Facebook also pushing the use of HTTPS with their apps and services ecosystems.

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