We use the Internet for all types of tasks, both personal and professional, but we must always take certain security measures and use trusted software. This is something that, of course, extends to the browser we choose, which in most cases will be Google Chrome.
And the search giant does not stop improving its project knowing that it is used by hundreds of millions of users daily around the world. Hence, at this moment the firm has taken a big step in order to improve the security of Chrome. It has just implemented an important security measure to take even more care of us while browsing.
Specifically, we mean that the program now automatically updates non-secure HTTP requests to HTTPS requests. This is something that ultimately applies to 100% of Chrome users. As you can imagine, the main objective of this functionality is to protect Chrome clients from old links that use the HTTP protocol. The deployment of this feature, which we could consider key to Chrome’s security, began last July.
However, initially the functionality was available to a certain number of program users. Now the search giant has decided to launch this feature for all its customers. This is achieved thanks to the arrival of this important security change to the stable version of Google Chrome.
Why this security change in Chrome is so important
To give you an idea of what we are telling you, this HTTPS update function is integrated into Google Chrome to automatically update all the websites we visit to HTTPS. We can affirm that this is the secure version of the hypertext transfer protocol. At the same time, the feature also guarantees a quick return to HTTP if the situation requires it.
Years ago, I’m sure many of you remember that browsers often made insecure HTTP requests to websites that already had HTTPS support. This is something that has been carried out because users were clicking on old links, or simply because the content of the websites had not been updated to use the new protocol. First of all, we must keep in mind that connections through the HTTP protocol are not encrypted and can be spied on to steal credentials and other confidential data.
That is precisely where the new functionality that has just been integrated into the Chrome browser comes into play to improve the security of our sessions. In some cases, users’ privacy and security are compromised by unnecessary insecure connections. But save, Google has decided to solve these problems and Chrome wants to automatically update HTTP links within the page itself to HTTPS. At the same time it integrates a quick fallback mechanism to HTTP if necessary.
All of this affects several aspects of navigation, since for example it is limited to navigations that are governed by existing mixed content policies. In parallel, Google states that this automatic protocol update does not prevent crashes, but offers more security than using the current rule. In turn, it limits our exposure to passive attackers.
