While that is certainly not a issue on most systems, it could lead to issues on some. If you are experiencing pages that do not load, broken applications or other issues you may want to fix or reverse the change.

Before I’m showing you how this is done I’d like to explain what’s happening.

Google recently announced that they would enable https, also known as encrypted, search for all logged in users that visit the main search engine google.com.

Logged in users who load http://www.google.com/ are automatically redirected to https://www.google.com/. Encrypted search can be beneficial as it encrypts the traffic that is send to and received from Google. This means that no one in your computer network (e.g. admins, your boss, your ISP) can see what you are doing on the Google website. They still see that you are on Google, and will see the sites that you click on though.

Using secure connections is an optional feature. On my PC, it is already enabled in the Chrome web browser but not in Firefox. Google has added a preference in the Global Search preferences to enable or disable the secure connection feature.

Google users who notice automatic redirects can prevent this from happening in the search settings. To do that they need to click on the options icon in the upper right corner of the screen (next to the profile name) and select Search Settings from the context menu that opens up.

They then need to scroll down until they find the Secure Connection setting.

Secure connections are enabled if the box is checked. To disable simply remove the check mark and click Save Preferences. This puts an end to redirects to the https version of search.

Update: It appears as if Google has removed the option to disable the redirection to https in the search options. There is no option available anymore to force your Google connections to use http instead of https.

Http is bad and https is good for privacy and security reasons. That’s all there is to it. Most services allow both http and https connections to their sites, Facebook is an example. There are services, like Gmail, Google’s email service, that only allows https connections and will redirect http requests to https for increased security and privacy.

This tutorial takes a look at some of the possibilities to force https connections:

Mozilla Firefox

The NoScript add-on is the best option for the Firefox web browser. The add-on’s primary function is to block scripts from being executed automatically. It offers however several options to improve security further, with one of them offering to configure the browser to always use https connections for specific sites. To open the listing, click in Options on the status bar icon, then Advanced > HTTPS in the NoScript Options window.

Here it is possible to add sites where https should always or never be used. Facebook users would simply add facebook.com in the force text area. All connections to facebook.com from that moment on will be automatically redirected to https. A user entering http://www.facebook.com/ in the browser to log into Facebook will be redirected to https://www.facebook.com/ automatically. The same is true for all other pages on facebook.

Update: Please note that you need to keep the pulldown menu below Forbid active web content unless it comes from a secure (HTTPS) connection to Never, which is the default setting.

Google Chrome

As far as I know, there is not a comparable solution for the Google Chrome browser. There are however a few alternatives. The first is explained in the article Use Google Chrome For Secure Web Browsing. Google Chrome has a startup parameter called --force-https. If you start Chrome with that parameter only https connections are allowed. This makes the majority of websites inaccessible on the other hand.

Chrome does have a few extensions that force SSL for specific sites. Extensions are for instance available for Facebook

Update

Use HTTPS is a Chrome extension that can be used to configure specific sites to always use HTTPS connections.

Opera

Opera 11 alpha which has been released recently supports extensions. One of the extensions that is available for the web browser is Security Enhancer, which forces https connections on a few sites including twitter and several Google services. The extension has a bug currently where the http page is fully loaded before the redirection to the https page. There is also no option to add other sites to the listing.

Still, considering that it is an early version there is hope that the developer continues to improve the extension to resolve the bug and add customization.

Internet Explorer

There is a user script for Internet Explorer to force https on Facebook, but that’s it. There does not seem to be another option.

Firefox and Google Chrome benefit immensely from add-ons and extensions. In this case, they are the only two browsers with options to force https connections on custom websites. Opera is going to get an extension eventually that will add this functionality as well.

Did I miss an option? Let me know in the comments.

I can then copy files from and to my dedicated server using this secure connection. I upload new websites this way or download mysql backups or other files that i want to store locally. Well, today version 4 of WinSCP was released as a beta. The main additions are ftp support (remember it supported SFTP before only) and SSH tunnel support. The later feature is not that important for me but the first is really nice.

The changelog for WinSCP 4.0 beta lists a lot of bug fixes and changes that would be to much to list here at my site. Just take a look at the changelog at the official site if this is really interesting for you.

What do you use to connect to a dedicated server ? Remember that I’m still using Windows mainly which limits the choice of programs that I could use.