Popular meme site Reddit has announced that it will soon encrypt all traffic with HTTPS by default.
Reddit will officially switch to HTTPS encryption by default beginning June 29, having offered the option since September 2014.
“We genuinely value the privacy of the people who trust Reddit as a platform for open communication," a Reddit spokesman told SC Magazine, noting that by "using HTTPS to communicate" Reddit will protect users "from someone watching their connection (such as a WiFi hotspot provider) [or] reading the plain-text contents of their browser communication.”
The company joins a slew of high-profile online properties that have taken the privacy-friendly step – as We Live Security reported earlier this week, Wikipedia now encrypts all browsing by default using HTTPS.
The company said in a blog post earlier this week that the step had been mulled for several years, and that: “We believe encryption makes the web stronger for everyone. In a world where mass surveillance has become a serious threat to intellectual freedom, secure connections are essential for protecting users around the world.”
Microsoft’s Bing also announced a similar step this week, according to PC World, who report that Bing will move to default HTTPS this summer, having offered the option for the past year and a half.
Websites embracing HTTPS is no doubt a positive step, but websites that adopt the encryption still need to be aware of cyberthreats. Earlier this year the ‘Logjam’ attack exposed a flaw that left tens of thousands of HTTPS websites vulnerable.
