Google has just announced that the traffic of YouTube is now 97 percent encrypted. The company also revealed the reason why website owners should protect their websites with HTTPS.
The internet company wrote on the official blog of YouTube the details of the increase of their encryption for the video streaming site. They have bolstered its encryption, and now 97 percent of its traffic is now encrypted using HTTPS.
The streaming site said that there were three reasons why they took so long to reach this high level of encryption. The first reason was due to the heavy traffic the website receives every day. It also had to deal with the different types of devices that the HTTPS needed to work on by ensuring content integrity.
The third reason of the delay was the number of mixed content the website got. These contents lead to lots of requests that were not secure enough. They block all mixed content using the Content Security Policy for web browsers, App Transport Security for iOS, and CleartextTraffic for Android.
The streaming company is also proud to announce that they are using HTTP Secure Transport Security or HSTS on the website. This is used to lessen the HTTP to HTTPs redirects, and they are having in for one year. This improves both their security and latency for their viewers, and they hope that they can preload this soon in different web browsers.
The company also revealed why they only stopped at 97 percent encryption for now. They said that some devices currently do not fully support the modern HTTPS. In time, they will phase out the insecure connections.
Any HTTP traffic that is not secured could be attacked at any time. The company suggested to all developers in the world to gain HTTPS protection for their websites and apps. They added that they should start right away before it is too late.
According to the official website of Google Developers, the encryption-enforcing protocol offers users its critical security and data integrity for any website that has it, and for all its visitors. It prevents the intruders from interrupting with the communications between the owners' websites and the visitors' browsers. These intruders are usually malicious attackers, and sometimes legitimate companies, but intrusive ones like those hotel websites that inject ads into pages.
Check out Google Chrome Developers' HTTPS video below: