Seeking a clear, simple page explaining why you need an SSL certificate

October 26, 2020 4:32 PM

If I wanted to explain to a random website owner why they needed an SSL certificate, where could I point them? I'm looking for something clear, unintimidating, and ideally affiliated with a reliable non-profit organization.

Now and then I come across a website with no SSL certificate, and I'd like to volunteer to help them get one set up, typically using free Let's Encrypt / Certbot certificates.

However, I suspect that half the people who don't have an SSL certificate don't know why they would want one.

I would really like to have a single, simple, understandable page I could point them to - from a trustworthy, established organization - that explains what it is, why you'd want one, and how to get one.

I tried searching for such a thing at eff.org and mozilla.org, but didn't find anything.

Any suggestions?

posted by kristi to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Please don't got telling people that they must do this. There are large hosting providers which don't allow Let's Encrypt, and still charge quite a bit (» than domain costs) per year for a certificate. Unless you're willing to pay for people's SSL certs, or do the logistics of moving old sites to better hosting, best to keep shtumm.

I'm amazed that Let's Encrypt doesn't have anything like this on their site. I just looked, and they don't.
posted by scruss at 6:14 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Resources from Google might be useful:

• Why HTTPS Matters
• Learn how to use HTTPS on your domain
• Secure your site with HTTPS

posted by wesleyac at 8:17 PM on October 26, 2020

Can you simply show them the warning screen that a browser may show if their site isn't encrypted? And explain that people who see those warnings will close their browser window rather than assume the site is safe.
posted by terrapin at 6:14 AM on October 27, 2020

See my answer to this old question: tldr it's in the owner's interest, assuming they want people to visit their website, because regular HTTP sites are slower, Google ranks them lower, and browsers increasingly issue scary warnings. Links in the comment.
posted by caek at 8:48 PM on October 29, 2020

My Wordpress instance brings this up as a (gentle) nag screen, and it's clear and factual: Why should I use HTTPS
posted by scruss at 4:06 AM on November 2, 2020