Image credit: Wired
By Ryan Singel
Google radically expanded Tuesday its use of bank level security that prevents Wi-Fi hackers and rogue ISPs from spying on your searches.
Starting Tuesday, logged-in Google users searching from Google’s homepage will be using https://google.com, not http://google.com — even if they simply type google.com into their browser. The change to encrypted search will happen over several weeks, the company said in a blog post Tuesday
The change means that the communication between a user’s browser and Google’s servers will be wrapped in encryption by default for those logged into their Google account. That means that hackers, school administrators and nosy corporate network admins won’t be able to see what search terms you are sending to the search giant.
Google introduced an HTTPS search option in May 2010, but users had to decide to go to that page (https://google.com). Google made it harder to find after schools objected to the change, saying it prevented them from censoring and monitoring their charges.
This go-round Google is providing a way for schools and network administrators to prevent the redirect to HTTPS, but Google will also make it clear to searchers on those networks that they are not sending data to Google via encryption.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/google-search-https/
