Securely browsing the Internet—even when you know what you’re doing—is tough. That’s partly why, nearly seven years ago, EFF worked together with The Tor Project to develop a privacy tool called HTTPS Everywhere, which automatically provides users with secure, encrypted connections to websites when available.
While HTTPS Everywhere can be installed on a number of desktop browsers, there are fewer options for mobile devices. One mobile browser app has fixed that.
Starting today, HTTPS Everywhere is now included by default, with no extra installation, in the mobile browser Tenta Browser, available on the Google Play Store. The integration of HTTPS Everywhere helps declutter the landscape of current mobile browser apps, many of which advertise themselves as security-focused, with promises of incognito mode, private browsing, secure tunnels, auto proxy abilities, VPN services, and more.
EFF appreciates this move and the effort taken by Tenta’s developers. It is a welcome inclusion that works through some of the trickier problems with online secure connections.
Connecting to websites online typically happens in one of two ways—either through HTTP or HTTPS. That extra “S” just means “secure,” and any websites that offer HTTPS connections offer the protections that come with it, like encryption and better privacy from sites that scoop up your browser habits for analytics. Unfortunately, websites sometimes offer only a patchwork of secure connections, leaving open vulnerabilities within their pages. For example, some websites can actually default to unencrypted HTTP, while some include links to unencrypted sites.
HTTPS Everywhere helps solve these problems by automatically rewriting connection requests through HTTPS so long as the websites offer it.
Securely browsing the Internet on your mobile device shouldn’t be a headache. With HTTPS Everywhere, now integrated into Tenta, it isn’t.