Last week, Automattic’s General Counsel Paul Sieminski announced that all *.wordpress.com subdomains will be served over SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) by the end of 2014. Sieminski wrote:
In the face of intrusive surveillance, we believe that everyone in the tech community needs to stand up and do what they can, starting with their own sites and platforms. For us, that means working to secure the connection between users and our websites. We’ll be serving all *.wordpress.com subdomains only over SSL by the end of the year.
It’s been a year since whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked files revealing the National Security Agency’s surveillance program. Since then, it seems like attention to security issues and support for reform, at least within the web community, have been snowballing.
Automattic has been relatively vocal in supporting efforts to reform government surveillance, including its participation in The Day We Fight Back and now Reset the Net. The company behind WordPress.com also publishes their own legal guidelines on transparency for WordPress.com users, and has begun publishing its own transparency report. According to Sieminski, Automattic has supported reform legislation in Congress.
I chatted to WordPress security specialist Jason Cosper about what all this means. He said:
SSL isn’t just for email, bank and medical data anymore. As our privacy and civil liberties are increasingly chipped away by both government and private entities, encrypted web traffic is one of the many options we should consider leveraging to keep our personal data secure.
As more and more of our lives move online, particularly as we move into the Internet of Things age, it will become ever more important (and complex) to secure our personal data.
Interested in WordPress security issues? I encourage you to come along to the June San Francisco WordPress Meetup (or watch the video after event) where we’ll be hearing a WordPress Security Update from Clef CEO Brennen Byrne.
Ernest Hemingway said: “As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.” Kirby Prickett is passionate about writing, reading, and understanding. She is currently a writer at WPEngine. You can connect with Kirby on Twitter, Google+, and find more of her writing on her personal blog.
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