HTTPS and how websites aren't using it properly

Although my activity here with blogging has been quite slim with me devoting all of my time setting up Techman's World IRC, I was reading an article today about how some websites, even major ones, are misusing HTTPS for it's communications.

Many sites use HTTPS for secure transit of material across the internet. The difference of course from normal HTTP is that data sent over HTTP is unencrypted, and otherwise unprotected from anyone wanting to snoop. HTTPS data packets are of course encrypted, making it harder to view data while in transit. Not to say that the protection is not fool proof; there are some shortcomings of using SSL/TLS, but generally it's better to use it than not to use it.

Microsoft's Outlook.com updated to provide better security regarding certificates

If you have opened up a new Outlook.com window or tab in your favorite browser the past 2 days, and noticed that Microsoft's name is displayed next to the padlock all the time, you have noticed Microsoft's newest security updates they put in.

Blogger now using HTTPS, for me at least

I was loading up my Blogger dashboard today to create a post about Google Apps not being free anymore, but right as I was about to write that post, I decided to write this instead.

While looking at my URL bar, I noticed that the URL that was loaded was a HTTPS one. For those that didn't know HTTPS was only on the login portions of Blogger, basically the Google login system. If you tried to visit https://www.blogger.com, you would be redirected to the normal http version of the page.

Disqus 2012 HTTPS support? I think I found a new feature

Well as always, you know that Techman explores anything and everything to see if anything is new. This time, I was looking at Disqus, specifically the help docs.

I had read something on my phone earlier about how real time commenting works in Disqus 2012. Bascially there is a script called event.js that connects and disconnects every 30 seconds. This script calls and sends new comments and other data and inserts it into the embed. Since I was on my phone, I was not able to look further, or at least look as far as I wanted to. Besides, I still had a good 1-2 hours until my phone made it to a charger, and it actually lasts all day, until you start browsing the web heavily and other activities related to this.