Chrome will mark sites without https as unsafe from July

As of Chrome 68, which will be released in July 2018, Google’s browser will mark sites that cannot be accessed via https as ‘unsafe’. According to the developer, enough progress towards a standard https web has been made to justify the move.

Anyone who uses the then-released version 68 of Chrome to visit an http site from July will see a warning in the URL bar that the connection is insecure. Chrome now ‘rewards’ sites with a secure https connection with a green lock. At sites without such an encrypted connection, the lock is simply omitted.

Chrome has been pushing for a move to a full https web for years. It is not that far yet, but according to the developer it is going in the right direction. More than 68 percent of Chrome traffic on Android and Windows last year went through https and for Chrome OS and macOS that percentage would be as much as 78.

Google has been marking login pages without https as unsafe since the beginning of 2017 and Firefox is already doing that. Google claims to make it easier for developers to switch to https, including with its Lighthouse tool, which developers can use to check their sites for the presence of mixed content.