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Browse more securely in Firefox with HTTPS Only mode

With everything and with this, most users increasingly take into consideration everything related to privacy and security in this type of program. The developers of these are fully aware of all this, hence more and more solutions of this type are available to us. In this way, the functionalities related to taking care of our Privacy & Security They are increasing.

These come to us as a rule through new updates that are sent periodically to our teams. At the same time, these programs, which serve as a way to connect us to the Internet, have to adapt to the latest trends and technologies on the Internet. And that is precisely what we are going to talk about next, focusing on the browser owned by Mozilla, Firefox.

As we mentioned before, the creators of this type of program take into account the preferences of their millions of clients. Hence, they are increasingly careful to take care of the sections that concern them the most.

What is it and why should I enable Firefox HTTPS Only mode

It is precisely for this reason that now we are going to talk about a functionality that has arrived relatively recently in the Firefox browser. It is known as HTTPS only mode, an element that helps us improve the experience of using the program. In fact, we could say that, with this mode enabled, Firefox takes care of loading only encrypted HTTPS websites beforehand.

To give you an idea, in the event that we activate this functionality, the program will not load an unencrypted website without asking us first. In this way, we largely avoid accessing potentially dangerous websites. Specifically, the secure HTTPS protocol is a very important method to maintain privacy and security on the web. It establishes an encrypted connection between the browser and the Web server. In this way, what is avoided is that third parties have the possibility of spying on the data that is sent between our local computer and the web that we are visiting.

Another section that we must take into account is that all sites are compatible with HTTPS at the moment. Therefore, some of these use unencrypted HTTP versions of a website when we access it, with the risks that this entails in the times. also for all this, the heads of Firefox opted to make the aforementioned Only HTTPS mode available to us.

How to activate this mode to increase security in the browser

It is interesting to know that this mode we are talking about is going to propose three configuration alternatives to choose from. With the active mode the browser itself will try to automatically load the HTTPS version of a website. The interesting thing about all this is that this step occurs even if we connect to the website in question through a HTTP link unencrypted. Thus, in the event that there is no other option, we will have to give an explicit permission before Firefox loads a HTTP page.

Enable HTTPS Only mode

Well, once we are clear about what this new implemented functionality is about, let’s see how we can make it work in Mozilla’s browser. The first thing we do is go to the main menu of the program. This is found in a button located in the upper right corner of the main window and is represented by three horizontal lines. Now we just have to click on it to click on the option called Settings. This will lead us to the configuration window of the browser itself.

firefox settings

In it, specifically in the left panel we see a category called Privacy & Security, where we are located. Here we are going to find a good number of configurable and customizable parameters related to these two important aspects of the program. All this will allow us to determine the security level that we want to do and use in Firefox. At that moment, in the right panel, we scroll down the screen to locate the section called HTTPS-only mode.

Https only mode

It is worth mentioning that by default the program has this functionality disabled. In this way, if we want to benefit from the aforementioned, we will have to activate it ourselves by hand. At this point we only have to opt for one of the two options that allow us to activate this mode that we are talking about.

Configure security feature in Mozilla browser

While the HTTPS Only mode is disabled by default, when activating it we find two options. The first one refers to activating this function for all the windows of the program. However, at the same time we have the possibility that it only starts when we navigate through a private window. It is very likely that most of the times, since we are opting for the first of the options.

With everything and with this we have the possibility of using all this that we tell you only when we are browsing in private mode. And there are many users who opt for these windows when they are going to move through certain internet web pages. So this functionality is nothing more than an added plus to improve this section. Regardless of the option we have chosen, we also have the possibility of managing a series of exceptions in the function.

http exceptions

With this, what we want to tell you is that we have the possibility of indicating to Firefox a series of web pages in which we do not want this mode to work. This is usually used in certain somewhat special websites that we know in advance are safe even using HTTP. As we can see and in a simple way, thanks to this mode implemented by Mozilla, we can increase security when using our browser in a few seconds. In the event that it becomes more of a nuisance than a positive measure, we can always deactivate it again if we wish.

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