Google Chrome is changing its interface and will disappear the green padlock symbol on unsafe sites, here’s how to recognize the portals at risk
The users who use the Google Chrome web browser more attentive to computer security will have noticed that the Mountain View service signals with a small green padlock, in the upper left corner before the URL, the safe sites to browse.
What specifically does this little green padlock indicate? Simple, it informs us that the information exchanged with that particular site is encrypted.
This means that the portal we have accessed uses an HTTPS protocol and not HTTP. This is something not to be taken for granted especially on social media or sites like e-commerce where we enter our credit cards to complete purchases. Users over time had become accustomed to checking the top left corner of Chrome to know if a site was secure or not. It was enough to see the green padlock to be sure. But now Google has decided to change the face of its web browser, so the symbol with the green padlock will no longer be visible to users.
Google Chrome: goodbye to the green padlock on encrypted sites
Why this choice? Because now most of the Internet sites have decided to use the HTTPS protocol. So secure and with encryption. And Google wants to clean up the interface of its web browser as much as possible without putting too much writing at the top of the URL bar. Does this mean that users will have to look at the URL every time to understand if it’s a site that uses HTTP or HTTPS protocol? No, because Google in the new update of Chrome will report with a written not safe, as already happens, the portals that do not use encryption. In a few words, if we access a site with HTTPS protocol we won’t see any writing, while if we navigate on a portal that doesn’t use encryption we’ll notice the writing in light grey Not Secure before the URL.
If the not secure site requires the user to enter data, the writing will turn from grey to red. If we notice this particular writing we avoid entering confidential information such as credit cards, date of birth, residential address and so on.