Chrome will warn users more often on http sites

Google has announced some changes to the Chrome browser. For example, from version 62 onwards, additional warnings must be displayed on http sites, for example in incognito mode and when entering data.

With the announcement, Google announces that the changes should take effect in October. The search giant writes that in principle all data that users enter on a website should be inaccessible to third parties. That is why Chrome warns from version 62 that the user is on an unsafe website if data is entered on an http page. It does not matter what kind of data is involved.

The second change is that incognito tabs also show a “not secure” message when a Chrome user is on an http page. Google justifies this choice by stating that users who activate incognito mode expect their privacy to be better protected. However, on an http page, the network traffic is visible to people who are on the same network, the company reasons.

Google has been tweaking the way the Chrome browser handles HTTP pages for some time now. In September of last year, the company announced that the now-released version 56 of Chrome would label websites that forward passwords and payment information as insecure if they do not use https. Google now says that since this change, there has been a 23 percent reduction in navigation to HTTP sites with password or payment information fields. In January, Firefox also started warning about http pages with login forms.

Illustration of the changes by Google