Security & Privacy + Software & Apps

Google has announced that the company is introducing encrypted searches. This means that, as the service is rolled out, your Google searches will be redirected to https://www.google.com, if you are signed into a Google account. The https version is encrypted using SSL, which means that the search terms you send to Google, and the results you receive, will be sent encrypted. (If you’re not signed into a Google account, you can simply load Google’s SSL page by using this URL: https://www.google.com/.)

In most cases, this won’t make any difference, but this prevents malicious users from sniffing network traffic and discovering what you search for. If you’re on a public Wi-Fi network, this is relatively easy to do, and someone watching network traffic could learn sensitive personal information about you by seeing what you search for.

You may not see this change right away, as Google has said this will occur “over the next few weeks.”

For more about how SSL works, see this Google support document.