This small update to Chrome will now make browsing the web more secure than ever

In a huge boost to browser security, an invisible upcoming update to Google’s Chrome browser could automatically make web browsing safer for a vast majority of the world. Reports have emerged that the browser will connect to HTTPS sites by default in the near future.

Why is this important? Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a technology that enables secure transmission of information between two parties (such as a user and a web server) in a manner that cannot be easily intercepted by another third party in between. When an HTTPS site is loaded, your internet service provider can see what site you connected to, but not which pages you visited or what links you clicked on.

With this change, the Chrome ‘Omnibox’ (or address bar) is set to become a lot faster when it loads websites as the browser will directly load the HTTPS version, instead of trying the insecure HTTP version first, according to a report by Windows Latest. Since the browser won’t waste time trying to load the insecure site first, loading most of the internet that is now HTTPS enabled anyway will be a lot faster. Google refers to these connections as “upgraded HTTPS navigations.

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Privacy and security-conscious users around the world have already enabled HTTPS-by-default using the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s excellent browser extension aptly named HTTPS Everywhere, which has been in existence for years now. The extension, which works on Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera browsers, is also integrated into the Brave and Tor Browsers.

However, for non-technical users and those who cannot be bothered to install yet another addon, this is an important change that will affect their online security for the better. The real advantage is that since the open-source Chromium browser that powers Chrome also powers Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet Browser, and Amazon Silk, these security improvements will also benefit users of those as well, without them noticing any visual changes.