How to Use the Encrypted Version of Wikipedia

June 28, 2011 in Internet, Security | 6 comments

For long I didn’t know that there even existed an encrypted version of Wikipedia, since you can’t reach it by simply adding an s after http. The regular address that you are used to looks like this:

And the secure address looks like this:

So it’s a bit lot longer and troublesome to access. However, that mustn’t be a problem. If you are using DuckDuckGo as your search engine and has set it to search through SSL, it will automatically change the outgoing Wikipedia links to the encrypted version. If you would like to have the encrypted Wikipedia as an option in the search bar in Firefox, you can add an entry for it with this add-on.

If you are curios about DuckDuckGo, read my short blog post about it:

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  • Arne

    Excuse me for a stupid question, but what is the purpose of using an encrypted version of Wikipedia?

  • Arne

    Excuse me for a stupid question, but what is the purpose of using an encrypted version of Wikipedia?

    • http://www.danielj.se Daniel Jonsson

      When you are browsing an encrypted website will all data between you (the client) and the server be encrypted. Therefore can’t somebody else on the network, the ISP, the government or similar see what data you are sending to each other; in this case what page on Wikipedia you are watching. All banks and serious Internet stores use SSL to send credit card information and login information encrypted. Services like Gmail and Facebook also use SSL for sending login information.

      Maybe it’s a bit pointless to browse Wikipedia encrypted. But since it’s such a tiny performance loss to use SSL compared to unencrypted, I can’t really see a reason to not use it. :)

      • Arne

        Well, when thinking about it I actually see the point. It is a bit creepy that someone or something make a profile of me containing among other things exactly witch pages on Wikipedia I have been reading. Thanks for your answer.

  • Marc St-Jacques

    Tried it today.  I get a certificate but my browser does not indicate the authority signing this certificate and Firefox did not flag this as problematic — usually, it warns me that the authority could not be established unless I add an exception, which I haven’t done.

    Hmmm.  Any hint ?

  • Marc St-Jacques

    Tried it today.  I get a certificate but my browser does not indicate the authority signing this certificate and Firefox did not flag this as problematic — usually, it warns me that the authority could not be established unless I add an exception, which I haven’t done.

    Hmmm.  Any hint ?