Now is a good time to stop exposing my visitor’s browsing history

Reading Ars tests Internet surveillance—by spying on an NPR reporter makes me realize that there isn’t much difference between a website that reports everything you visit to the NSA and a website you browse with an unencrypted connection. If spy agencies around the world indeed have access to the content of all our communications, hosting a website on plain unencrypted HTTP is like handing them visitor’s detailed browsing history. This history once combined with the history of other website can reveal many details.

So today I’m updating this website to make everything served over a secure encrypted HTTPS connection. It’s not a complete solution to privacy: a spy on the network will still be able to know you’re browsing my website. But they won’t know which pages, which is one less data point revealing what you’re doing.

If you host a website, you should do the same as a service to your visitors.