In the mainstream news, there is a lot of talk right now about net neutrality for internet service providers (ISPs), not to mention the whirlwind discussions about malicious electronic intrusions, like the Russian involvement in the 2016 US Presidential election, or the recent bout of ransomware that is being linked to North Korea.
The takeaway from these current events is that as our lives become increasingly dependent upon our online presence, we need to take our online security and privacy more seriously, especially during uncertain times.
Asphalt & Rubber might be only a modest motorcycle website, where you spend a handful of minutes during your day reading about all things two-wheeled, but we take these issues very seriously…and for good reason.
As such, we have enabled and forced HTTPS browsing for all users on our site, not only so your connection to our website is secure, but also so your privacy is protected from anyone who might wish to read or track your presence across the internet.
For our less tech-savvy users, this means that your browser will now use an HTTPS connection, instead of an HTTP connection (e.g. https://… instead of http://…), which uses an encryption protocol to shield the connection between your computer to our servers.
This helps to protect you from third parties who might try to eavesdrop on your connection to Asphalt & Rubber (or to any website, quite frankly). For example, if you’re reading this webpage on an unsecured wifi network, or at an airport, Starbucks, or hotel, then you’re connection is vulnerable if its using HTTP and not HTTPS.
This is by no means a full-proof way of protecting you and your information from malicious users, but our actions are part of a larger effort by responsible web-proprietors to shield users from security and hacking concerns. It’s the first step in many that should be taken to browse online.
Our login and sign-up pages for A&R Pro have always used HTTPS, but we now want to extend that protection to all website communications on Asphalt & Rubber.
In order to make this change, Asphalt & Rubber has had to drop some advertisers because their ads use the unsecured communication standards, but it is a trade-off we feel is necessary to protect our users, especially as the FCC begins to dismantle its policies on net neutrality.
The transition to HTTPS should be seamless (in fact, we already made the switch several weeks ago), but you might want to update your bookmarks, all the same. If you have any questions about HTTPS on Asphalt & Rubber, please ask away in the comments section.
For more reading about HTTPS and what it means to you, here are a couple resources:
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