HarryN
Flashlight Enthusiast
It is time for me to refresh my small business web site, and I have come across the "movement" to make all web sites use https:/ vs http:/. (secure vs open access web sites). I am trying to determine if this really benefits the privacy of those who visit my site, or actually helps to undermine it.
BTW, my web site is really just a static business brochure with a few pages, nothing special. I don't pay google or anyone else for advertising and it has nothing to do with flashlights.
The claimed motivation for this move to https appears to be:
- https:/ is a "secure" connection, and that is always better – not sure why though?
- If "all" connections, including ones that do not matter, then when data is actually important to be secured, it is harder to filter this out. This sort of makes sense to me.
- The meta data about the visitor is more strongly hidden, making it much harder for third party marketing / spying on your browsing companies like google and double-click to monitor your cookie trail of visits.
- It automatically authenticates both the web site and the end user, at least to some level.
I am having some doubts about if this is a good idea or not:
- It seems like google would not promote an idea that goes against their fundamental business model of tracking your every move, but rather would promote ideas that makes this better for them, perhaps at the expense of others.
- If the connection actually authenticates the person reading the web site, this seems like it becomes "less" private for them, not more private.
- In some ways, it reminds me of how ICAAN (the web control organization) shifted everyone so that web site owners had to reveal very private data to the whois, and then "pay" to keep it private. Forcing web sites to use https adds another one of these "unnecessary fees" to the cost of operating a web site, so adding to google's profitability at no clear benefit to the users.
If anyone has any opinions on this area, I would really like to hear them, technical, business, or political.
Thanks
BTW, my web site is really just a static business brochure with a few pages, nothing special. I don't pay google or anyone else for advertising and it has nothing to do with flashlights.
The claimed motivation for this move to https appears to be:
- https:/ is a "secure" connection, and that is always better – not sure why though?
- If "all" connections, including ones that do not matter, then when data is actually important to be secured, it is harder to filter this out. This sort of makes sense to me.
- The meta data about the visitor is more strongly hidden, making it much harder for third party marketing / spying on your browsing companies like google and double-click to monitor your cookie trail of visits.
- It automatically authenticates both the web site and the end user, at least to some level.
I am having some doubts about if this is a good idea or not:
- It seems like google would not promote an idea that goes against their fundamental business model of tracking your every move, but rather would promote ideas that makes this better for them, perhaps at the expense of others.
- If the connection actually authenticates the person reading the web site, this seems like it becomes "less" private for them, not more private.
- In some ways, it reminds me of how ICAAN (the web control organization) shifted everyone so that web site owners had to reveal very private data to the whois, and then "pay" to keep it private. Forcing web sites to use https adds another one of these "unnecessary fees" to the cost of operating a web site, so adding to google's profitability at no clear benefit to the users.
If anyone has any opinions on this area, I would really like to hear them, technical, business, or political.
Thanks