Have you ever noticed when you go to your bank's website, or paypal, or some other website that has sensitive information, that there is a lock icon next to the web address? On Chrome it looks a little like this:



That lock means that your connection to that website is encrypted and protected from being intercepted by bad guys. That's why it's safe to send your credit card information to an ecommerce store if the lock icon is present.

Most websites (like ATP) don't use encryption if there are no financial details being sent. The data is always sent in the clear and can theoretically be eavesdropped on by governments and others.

There is a movement afoot to try to make encryption the norm across the entire web, and as a web developer I applaud the idea. Privacy is a good thing and I'm going to do my part by moving ATP to a fully encrypted site. I'll be migrating it over the coming week, and with luck nobody should notice a thing. Eventually you'll just automatically notice the green lock icon in your browser when you visit ATP. When that happens, you can feel good knowing that absolutely nobody can see what is being sent back and forth between your browser and the ATP website.

I mention it now to give a heads-up to everyone, in case there are any issues that arise from this code change, you'll know where they came from.

Thanks, Dave. It's nice to know you're always looking out for the best interest of all of us.

But the content we post will still be publicly visible? Clarifying, not complaining. Kind of like that it is visible.

This is a good thing.

Many of us quite innocently post things like 'we will be on vacation' or will be at a wedding or funeral without thinking who may be reading.
When I worked security (before computers ) we were taught that criminals read the society pages of the newspaper to find out which houses would be empty and easy to rob.

With Dave at the helm we can feel secure and chit-chat more freely about many things, including plants.

Actually, to clarify: the site will continue to be 100% visible to everyone just as it is now. Your transactions between the site and ATP will be encrypted.

Here are the details of how it works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Will you be doing this on Cubits as well?

How refreshing, giving a heads-up to everyone!

For the time being, I'm actually only planning to do this for ATP and none of my other sites.

Wonderful new addition to ATP Dave.

I just made the switch for everyone so you should be using HTTPS on ATP right now. Look up at your URL bar and you should now see a green lock icon next to our website address. If you see the green lock, you can relax and feel good knowing that your communications back and forth with ATP are no longer being sent in the clear and nobody can ever eavesdrop on what you do here on ATP. As always, stuff you post to the public places of the site (forums, blogs, etc) are, of course, visible to anyone who comes.

A pretty green lock!

Firefox just has a plain gray lock. But it is there.

I have a green leaf in front of the https.

Dave,

Thanks Dave, and good job on a seamless transition!

I think it's going to require a little modification of my habits. In the past, I could compose a response, go to another spot on the site without creating a new tab (to check on some information, for instance), and use the back button to get back to my response before sending it. Now the response is gone when I go back, and sometimes the use of the back button brings up a message saying that my browser does not recreate sensitive documents. I'll just have to learn to open new tabs wherever I go.

That happened to me while composing a reply on the lily forum. There was an option to "Try Again" and that brought up my "Post a reply" box with everything still intact. Give that a try next time.

Thank you, Connie. I will try that next time. This time, I freaked out instead.

That only works if you clicked Preview or otherwise submitted the form, and you can't rely on it to work every time!