The following is a portion of a blog post from Wordfence, a trusted security plugin that we use on all of our WordPress sites. If you host with us, we automatically set up an SSL Certificate for you…it is included with your hosting!
“On approximately January 31st of this month, version 56 of the Chrome web browser will be released. There is a significant change in the way it displays websites that are not using HTTPS, also known as SSL. This change may confuse your site visitors or surprise you if you are not expecting it.
Starting with the release of Chrome 56 this month, any website that is not running HTTPS will have a message appear in the location bar that says “Not Secure” on pages that collect passwords or credit cards. It will look like this:
This is the first part of a staged rollout that encourages websites to get rid of plain old HTTP.
In an upcoming release Google Chrome will label all non-HTTPS pages in incognito mode as “Not secure” because users using this mode have an increased expectation of privacy.
The final step in the staged rollout will be that Chrome will label all plain HTTP pages as “Not secure”. It will look like this:
The impact on WordPress site owners
So, once again, starting on approximately January 31st of this month, any page on your website that is non-HTTPS and has a password form or credit card field will be labeled as “Not secure” in the location bar by Google Chrome. This includes your WordPress login page.
This may confuse your site visitors who sign in to your website because they may interpret the message to indicate that your website has been compromised. They could also interpret the message to mean that your site has some underlying security issue other than being non-HTTPS.
The current timeline for the release of Chrome 56 is unclear. The official statement from Google indicates it will be released some time in “January”. However, based on the Chromium development calendar it looks like Chrome 56 may be released on January 31st. You’ll notice that calendar says “Estimated stable dates” and is subject to change.
Assuming Chrome 56 will be released on January 31st, that gives you two weeks starting today to get your site running on 100% SSL to avoid the new “Not secure” message appearing on your login pages…
Mark Maunder – Wordfence Founder/CEO.”
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