If you use https rather than http when connecting to sites you are more secure. You have added assurance that you are actually getting to the site you intended to go to. There is malware that can hijack your Domain Name Service (DNS) and send you to a different site than requested. This fails with https, because they will not be able to provide a certificate for that site. Our web site https://hernandosun.com/ recently switched to defaulting all traffic to https.
It is safer to browse the web on https (secure) sites. Usually the browser will give you an indication that you are on a secure site by showing you a green lock. This means that you are using certificates and encryption to verify that you are really going where you think you are going.
The https secure sites use a chain of trust to verify the site is who they claim to be. There are a few companies that are trusted and are allowed to control top level certificates. These companies verify that people requesting a certificate are connected to the company. Once you have a certificate from one of those companies your browser will trust it and provide the signal that lets you know that this site is secure.
In addition to the additional assurance that you are connecting to the site you asked to connect to, all the data sent to and from the server will be encrypted. This will prevent several types of attacks that an attacker would use. They cannot eavesdrop on your conversation and steal your information as you send it to the server. The cybercriminals are also unable to execute man in the middle attacks, i.e. getting between you and the destination web site and replacing information sent back and forth.
Some sites offer only http, while others support both http and https. If you can, it is much safer to use https to connect to web site. The ‘s’ in https stands for secure.