Securing your website with SSL

Google is pushing for all websites to use SSL 'channels' to secure vistors' data. It's particularly important to secure data for shopping websites where users enter their payment card details and it's arguable that you should protect all customer data no matter what. You may have seen an image similar to below in your browser address bar.

SSL padlock on Twitter

It's the padlock that's important. You can click on it to see the certificate details:

Twitter's SSL certificate

Who's using it and who's not?

18 December 2014

In this list we've looked at the home pages of some websites to see who's doing what.

Some that use SSL universally:

  • Google (obviously)
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Netflix

and some that don't:

  • Amazon
  • BBC
  • IMDB
  • Wikipedia

As ever it's a business decision to decide whether or not it's worth it. If you decide it's for you then there are plenty of providers if you search for SSL certificates on the web.

You can pay for a certificate but from mid-2015 a perfectly good free certificate will be available free from Let's Encrypt. If you want a green bar to appear (it claims more security) then you will have to pay for it.

Reference

Let's Encrypt

Wikipedia

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