Google has made yet another big announcement this week with the release of Google SSL Search Beta. This addition to Google’s lineup makes a big step forward in enhancing privacy while searching for content on the web.
Right now, if you are searching on Yahoo or the standard Google web search, your search terms are not encrypted. This means, if a hacker had access to the network you are using (your home or local coffee shop for example) they would be able to see, in plain text, what you were searching for.
Google SSL Search Beta takes the next step and encrypts the search data, so hackers won’t have access to it.
Think of SSL encryption as this. If I was sending you a message in mores code, I would send you a series of short and long beeps. If I used SSL encryption, my message would be rearranged and jumbled to a point where nobody would be able to understand it, except you and me.
How to use Google SSL Beta as the default search in Google Chrome
The first thing you may want to do is ensure all of your searches are made using Google SSL Search in Google Chrome. To do this we will create a new search engine in Chrome and set it as our default.
- In chrome, click the wrench icon in the upper right corner and look for the Options selection.
- In the new window that opens, look towards the bottom for Default Search and click on the Manage button
- Next you will see a screen that shows all of your available search engines. Some of these are from sites you have visited in the past.
Off to the right, click Add… - The first option is name and can be anything you would like to call it, the second option is keyword and can also be anything you would like, as long as it is unique from your other search engines, and the third text area is URL which should be copied from below. Here is what I used
- After clicking Ok to confirm your new search engine, select it from your list and click the button on the right called Make Default
- Done!
Name: Google SSH
Keyword: google
URL: https://www.google.com/search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s
Now all of your search’s in Google Chrome will be secured with 128bit encryption. There are a couple of caveats right now with Google SSL Beta. First off, SSL can reduce load times, but should be marginal as Google is so fast already and secondly, only your standard web queries will be encrypted at the moment. If the future Google image search and news, for example, will also have the option to be encrypted.
Hence the beta tag.
For more info on Google’s SSL Search, check out the SSL search help page.
Why would anyone care if a hacker can see what your searching for?
You would care if the hacker was from another country, perhaps China or India, and they were monitoring where you use your credit card online. That would make it very easy to present you with a fake website that looks exactly like the one you are used to seeing while using your credit card online.
The reasons we should use Google SSL search are not hiding crimes and malicious behavior, they are protecting yourself from identity theft and credit card fraud. Secrecy is a double edged sword that has two very distinct sides.