Further changes planned for security indicators

May 18, 2018 06:21 GMT  ·  By

Google has recently announced that future versions of its Chrome browser would introduce new security indicators changes, as the company is trying to make it easier for users to determine whether a website is safe or not.

Starting with version 69 projected to launch in September this year, Google Chrome will no longer display the HTTPS indicator when a secure website is loaded in the browser. The company previously introduced this indicator to clearly mark secure browsers, while also making other changes to encourage developers to switch to HTTPS, such as ranking these pages higher in its search engine.

But now that the world is slowly migrating to HTTPS, Google says that it no longer makes any sense to display such an indicator because “users should expect that the web is safe by default, and they’ll be warned when there’s an issue.”

HTTP sites to be marked more clearly

In other words, while the HTTPS indicator is going away, this isn’t going to happen with HTTP sites, which will be flagged more prominently when users visit them.

“Since we’ll soon start marking all HTTP pages as ‘not secure’, we’ll step towards removing Chrome’s positive security indicators so that the default unmarked state is secure. Chrome will roll this out over time, starting by removing the “Secure” wording and HTTPS scheme in September 2018 (Chrome 69),” Emily Schechter, Product Manager, Chrome Security, explains.

Furthermore, starting with Chrome 70, which in its turn is due to land in October, HTTP sites will be marked with a red warning reading “not secure,” making it more easily noticeable for users that the loaded pages aren’t using HTTPS.

Google Chrome is currently at version 66, and you can download the stable, beta, and developer builds for Windows, Linux, and Mac from Softpedia using these links.