If you want to protect the data you send and receive over the internet, then relying on a regular HTTP connection is not advisable. What you have to do is surf on a HTTPS encrypted connection. Surfing on HTTPS is advisable especially if you browse the web on a public network, because people with malicious intent cannot snoop on your data.
To ensure the maximum level of protection, Google’s Gmail has been using HTTPS as the default since the beginning of 2010. At the beginning of 2011, Picasa Web Albums, the photo sharing site offered by Mountain View-based search engine giant Google, announced that it started the year with a few new features.
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The new features Picasa Web Albums touted at the time were: - Access to more EXIF metadata, more than 200 EXIF tags; - A new way to zoom; by clicking on the magnifying glass you can view an image in its full resolution. - And the option to surf on an encrypted, secure HTTPS connection.
Picasa Web Albums representatives explained at the time that you have to make sure to type https in the URL, mainly https://picasaweb.google.com instead of http://picasaweb.google.com if you want to surf on a HTTPS connection. At the time HTTPS was not the norm for Picasa Web Albums.
HTTPS has become the norm as of this month. Picasa Web Albums now uses HTTPS by default, just like Gmail and other Google services (Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites) do. You no longer have to worry about typing in https instead of https in Picasa Web Albums’ URL. Google automatically redirects picasaweb.google.com to https://picasaweb.google.com .
In related news, if you want to force full-session HTTPS connections when surfing the web, check out the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox add-on developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in collaboration with the Tor Project.
If you want to protect the data you send and receive over the internet, then relying on a regular HTTP connection is not advisable. What you have to do is surf on a HTTPS encrypted connection. Surfing on HTTPS is advisable especially if you browse the web on a public network, because people with malicious intent cannot snoop on your data.