(
Hyper
Text
Transport
Protocol
Secure) The protocol used to access a secure Web server. When
https:// is used as the prefix of a Web address rather than
http://, the session is managed by a security protocol such as TLS, and the transmission is encrypted to and from the Web server.
Increasingly, all websites use HTTPS; for example, in 2015, Wikipedia switched to HTTPS. For details about the HTTP protocol, see
HTTP. To learn about the security protocol, see
TLS and
security protocol. See
HSTS and
HTTPS Everywhere.
The Closed Lock
A closed padlock indicates the website is accessed via HTTPS, which almost every site is these days. In this example, the complete address is https://www.nytimes.com.
A Lot of Secure Traffic
Today, way more HTTPS packets traverse the Internet than regular HTTP; witness this metric from a router in a home.