Wikipedia adopting HTTPS secure connection

Open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia is beefing up its security and protecting users from third-party snooping and censorship by adopting the HTTPS connection standard, its parent foundation Wikimedia Foundation said.

Wikimedia said this means all traffic on Wikimedia sites will be encrypted, with Wikipedia users sharing in the world’s knowledge more securely.

However, this could mean connection difficulties for some users with slow Internet connections.

"To be truly free, access to knowledge must be secure and uncensored. At the Wikimedia Foundation, we believe that you should be able to use Wikipedia and the Wikimedia sites without sacrificing privacy or safety," senior legal counsel Yana Welinder, legal counsel Victoria Baranetsky, and operations engineer Brandon Black said in a blog post.

"Over the last few years, increasing concerns about government surveillance prompted members of the Wikimedia community to push for more broad protection through HTTPS. We agreed, and made this transition a priority for our policy and engineering teams," they added.

They added 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. Without encryption, governments can more easily surveil sensitive information, creating a chilling effect, and deterring participation, or in extreme cases they can isolate or discipline citizens. Accounts may also be hijacked, pages may be censored, other security flaws could expose sensitive user information and communications," they said.

Also, Wikimedia said it will use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to protect against any bid to "break" HTTPS and intercept traffic.

Such a change should benefit nearly half a billion people who rely on Wikipedia and its sister projects, they added.

Wikimedia said it had been working on establishing the infrastructure and technical requirements, and understanding the policy and community implications of HTTPS for all Wikimedia traffic since 2011.

Since 2013, it added all logged-in users have been accessing via HTTPS.

Protection from snooping, censorship

With HTTPS, they said the encrypted connection between a user's computer and Wikimedia sites will make it "more difficult for governments and other third parties to monitor your traffic."

"It also makes it harder for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to censor access to specific Wikipedia articles and other information," they added.

First steps

But Wikimedia also admitted HTTPS may also have performance implications for users, particularly those accessing Wikimedia sites from countries or networks with poor technical infrastructure.

It said it has been carefully calibrating its HTTPS configuration to minimize "negative impacts related to latency, page load times, and user experience."

Other sites

A report on PC World said the new policy may also cover other Wikimedia sites like Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons, "sometime in the next couple of weeks." — Joel Locsin/BM, GMA News