The browser community has made no secret of its shared goal to mandate an encrypted internet. Already this year we\u2019ve seen browsers start calling out sites with login fields that aren\u2019t served over HTTPS, and those warnings figure to increase in severity over the coming months until eventually all HTTPS websites are labeled \u201cnot secure.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the biggest industries that has yet to encrypt en masse is the news media. If you check the Alexa 500, the top news sites are a mixed bag. You have some, like The New York Times and The Guardian that have already encrypted, others like CNN and the Huffington Post have not.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s understandable. Full disclosure, we are an enterprise partner of The New York Times, we\u2019ve helped them undertake a massive HTTPS migration and can certainly appreciate the challenges that come with securing older legacy systems, hard coded media, and a range of other difficult obstacles.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a problem that almost all media companies face as they race to migrate to HTTPS before the browsers\u2019 deadline reaches. In fact, it\u2019s enough to almost make you want to put off the process altogether\u2014as long as you can wait.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, that thinking would be a disservice to any media company\u2019s readers. The reason for that is simple: privacy.<\/p>\n In the United States and around the world we\u2019ve reached a time where the debate over privacy is boiling over. Governments and private companies alike are tracking internet users. Just recently, the US government attempted to get information on the people associated with an anti-Trump website.<\/p>\n Citizens\u2019 privacy concerns are at an all-time high.<\/p>\n One of the benefits of SSL is it blocks an individuals\u2019 activity on your website. Granted, someone can see that a person\u2019s browser visited a website with SSL, but it can\u2019t see what pages are being browsed.<\/p>\n This is a huge benefit to personal privacy. For instance, if a news site has a perspective section dealing with African American issues or LGBTQ issues, being tracked regularly across those kinds of pages could allow someone to infer certain details about an individual. This type of information is what allows advertisers to target ads your way and it also allows for third parties to profile you.<\/p>\n News sites, especially in the current political climate, have a duty to their readers to protect their privacy and prevent them from being tracked across their websites.<\/p>\n With freedom of the press under near-constant attack and regular cries of \u201cfake news,\u201d it already would be a bad look for a legitimate news outlet to be labeled \u201cnot secure.\u201d But it\u2019s a worse look for that news site to look like it doesn\u2019t care about its users\u2019 privacy. And at this point, that\u2019s what it looks like when a news site has yet to encrypt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Privacy concerns, as much as anything else, should be ample motivation The browser community has made no secret of its shared goal to mandate an encrypted internet. Already this year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":"","tve_custom_css":"","tve_user_custom_css":"","tve_globals":{},"tcb2_ready":0,"tcb_editor_enabled":0,"tve_landing_page":"","_tve_header":"","_tve_footer":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[3843,3844,467],"class_list":["post-4696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everything-encryption","tag-news-media","tag-ssl-encryption","tag-ssltls","post-with-tags"],"views":5972,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/iStock-598671436.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}SSL Blocks Tracking<\/h2>\n