Is your website secure? Http vs Https

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As we were building our business model for Visit Clarion we wanted to help many local businesses and organizations by linking to their websites.

Quickly we ran across a problem. The Apple App Store and Google Play would not let websites with the “http” designation link from the Visit Clarion app. We dug into the situation and learned Google and others had a great concern for security. Too many hackers or middlemen were stealing passwords, credit card numbers and other private information. Beginning in 2016 a movement was begun by website browsers to upgrade security by implementing the “https” protocol designation. Many websites in Clarion County have not made the transfer to the more secure protocol. An informative article about it can be found in Wikipedia as well as other sources on the Internet. To make your website safer, contact your provider. They will help you ensure that your website uses the secure protocol https. HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. With HTTPS, the same conversation takes places between a server and web browser, except the information is encrypted. The encryption prevents third parties from stealing your data.