HTTPS Everywhere brings more encryption

Firefox extension HTTPS Everywhere has undergone a giant leap in version number from version 0.2.2 to 0.9.0 and now offers improved protection against cookie-stealing extension Firesheep. When visiting popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, the add-on automatically switches to the encrypted HTTPS version, which offers better protection from prying eyes. The new version includes new rules for Amazon's S3 service, GitHub, bit.ly, Dropbox and Evernote. The developers have also polished up Hotmail support.

The Facebook rule has been relaxed – a certificate error meant that some Facebook apps were blocked by the previous version. After installing the add-on, users who want to protect their Facebook cookies from Firesheep and similar tools and are willing to do without these apps will need to activated the extended Facebook+ rule set. Users wanting to use Facebook chat will have to deactivate all Facebook rules and surf Facebook unprotected.

Because the Amazon rule set has, according to the developers, caused some problems, it now has to be activated manually. To access Google's image search after installing the add-on, users will need to go directly to http://images.google.com – because the image search is only available in unencrypted form at present, there is no image search link on the experimental encrypted version of Google's web site.

(crve)