I use Firefox, and sometimes it says: "Some parts of this page are not protected, such as images." What is considered unsafe?

Question

I use the Firefox browser, and sometimes, on certain web pages, the SSL icon says: "Some parts of this page are not protected, such as images." What, in fact, is considered an unsafe element?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Everything delivered via an insecure channel.

In general, this means that the web page developer combines HTTP-based URLs with HTTPS-based URLs on the same page. URLs can be for images, as well as for JavaScript, CSS, or anything else that can be referenced from a web page. As a user, you can do little about this - this is a warning that it is likely that your data may be delivered to other servers in an open, unencrypted way over the Internet. This is Bad Thing, but you can’t do much except to avoid this site or contact the administration or webmaster for the site.

If you are a developer, most of the time you can use URLs related to the schema when accessing images or javascript, etc.

i.e. Instead of this:

<img src="http://example.com/dot.png"> 

use this:

 <img src="//example.com/dot.png"> 

YMMV.

See also: https://url.spec.whatwg.org/

Answer 2

In firefox, you can see in the Inspect Element => Network Tab => Columns domain. Also, also check the Console tab.

I hope this solves your problem.

Answer 3

"Unsafe" simply means "does not load via HTTPS."

It is not safe:

 <img class="media-object" src="http://placehold.it/50x50"> 

It is safe:

 <img class="media-object" src="https://placehold.it/50x50">