As browsers continue to reinforce the “HTTPS-only” policy, EFF has decided to deprecate the popular browser extension HTTPS Everywhere. The foundation is convinced they have achieved the intended goal of a secure internet with HTTPS.
HTTPS Everywhere Extension To Retire
In a recent post, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced sunsetting the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension.
For years, HTTPS Everywhere served users secured browsing via HTTPS even when the corresponding websites didn’t implement HTTPS. With its underlying encryption, this extension kept users safe from online snoopers.
This extension also helped the world recognize the importance of HTTPS implementation.
Consequently, the US government mandated in 2017 for the government websites to apply HTTPS to prevent interception and cyberattacks.
Likewise, Google and other tech giants heavily advocated for applying SSL on websites. The vendors even implemented various measures to spread awareness about secure browsing among the users. These include displaying specific indicators in the address bar and blocking content on sites with poor or no HTTPS.
Also, the popular browsers, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, rolled out features like “HTTPS-Only” or “HTTPS-First” to encourage secure browsing for both the users and the website admins.
Given all these developments regarding HTTPS adaptation, EFF believes to have achieved the goal. Hence, it has announced retiring the extension.
EFF is preparing to deprecate the HTTPS Everywhere web extension as we look to new frontiers of secure protocols like SSL/TLS.
As elaborated, the tool will remain in “maintenance mode” after December 2021 for the following year. Also, the service will keep informing users about the simple browser settings to implement HTTPS browsing throughout this time. This gradual phase-out will presumably help the users and the service’s partners in the transition.
So, users can continue to use the HTTPS Everywhere extension for about a year. Nonetheless, it’s better to enable the relevant settings in the web browsers across all devices to remain stress-free.