Wikipedia Rolls Out Support for Encrypted HTTPS Connections

Wikipedia has made a big move towards more secure, or at least more private browsing, by enabling HTTPS connections for the entire site. All Wikimedia wikis are included in the update as well.

What this means is that users will be able to browse the online encyclopedia via an encrypted connection and not worry about others eavesdropping on their actions.

"We recently enabled protocol-relative URLs on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis. That change was in preparation for this change: we’ve just enabled native HTTPS support on all wikis," Wikimedia announced.

"This means that you can now visit sites using the HTTPS protocol; for instance, if you wish to visit the English Wikipedia, you can go to: https://en.wikipedia.org," it explained.

"This allows you to visit our sites without having your browsing habits tracked, and you can log in without having your password or user session data stolen," it said.

Wikipedia has been offering a solution for those looking for a more secure connection, via secure.wikimedia.org. It was a cumbersome fix and it didn't cover all use-cases. The organization recently enabled support for protocol-relative URLs for all of its sites.

Now, users simply have to type HTTPS instead of HTTP in front of the URL and be done with it.

To be clear, Wikipedia is not enabling HTTPS connections by default or enabling users to set HTTPS as default as other sites have, granted, with greater privacy concerns, such as Gmail, Facebook or Twitter.

It's a move in the right direction though and it should be enough for those who have asked for the feature. Except in some more extreme cases, the articles you read on Wikipedia are not going to reveal much about you and are not a privacy concern for most users.

The issue though is choice, users should be able to use an encrypted connection if they want to. Having it on one of the world's largest sites is a good sign and perhaps an example to others.