The case for https: Wikipedia moves towards the 'secure' web

Net neutrality has been a raging issue in India over the past couple of months. A lot has been written on the issue. However, compromise on data privacy is a larger issue that is also being addressed internationally. In response to international governmental requests for user data from Google and Facebook, tools such as **Duck Duck Go** and several others rose in popularity. Later, Google and then Facebook started implementing secure sockets layer (SSL) connections. The latest entity to implement https is Wikipedia. What this really means is Wikipedia would now be able to deter government surveillance. Wikipedia said on its official blog, “Today, we’re happy to announce that we are in the process of implementing HTTPS to encrypt all Wikimedia traffic. We will also use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to protect against efforts to ‘break’ HTTPS and intercept traffic. With this change, the nearly half a billion people who rely on Wikipedia and its sister projects every month will be able to share in the world’s knowledge more securely.” Strict transport security is a mechanism that allows websites (or rather web servers) to tell browsers or clients that they need to connect using a secure connection only, and not via the vulnerable http. The blog added, “Over the last few years, increasing concerns about government surveillance prompted members of the Wikimedia community to push for more broad protection through HTTPS. We agreed, and made this transition a priority for our policy and engineering teams.” Earlier, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had said that he would **prefer exiting China rather than follow censorship laws** .