Brazil’s top news site O Globo beefs up security & privacy
RIO — Visitors to the O Globo website have an extra guarantee of security, privacy, and credibility. Since May 2, the newspaper has implemented HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol) technology on its Web pages, which automatically encrypts all data exchanged between the reader’s computer, tablet or mobile phone and its servers.
As a result of four months of dedication by a team of eight people from the digital development area of Infoglobo, the initiative makes O Globo the first Brazilian newspaper to adopt this protocol, says Antonio Coelho, executive director of Digital Strategy at Infoglobo, who led the work.
“The main advantage of this is to ensure the privacy of our readers”, he explains. —With this implementation of HTTPS our readers are assured that anything they access on the O Globo site cannot be monitored by any external agent; the Internet service provider, the telephone company or even government agencies. While these third parties may find that the readers have accessed the O Globo website, our visitors are now guaranteed 100% privacy on the content they read.
The adoption of the HTTPS protocol also makes O Globo the only Brazilian newspaper listed in the “Secure The News” — a Freedom of the Press Foundation project that tracks and promotes the adoption of HTTPS encryption by the websites of the main news organizations.
According to Coelho, the measure aligns the newspaper’s website to a global movement that seeks to improve the security of news services on the Internet and includes other important international publications and portals such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Wired, UK’s The Guardian and The Independent, and the French Le Monde, among others. He says that with technology, no fake news site could pretend to be O Globo.
When viewing the lock icon next to the O Globo address on the Internet, readers can be sure of the authenticity of that content — says Coelho. — This reinforces the credibility of the information published by the newspaper on the internet. In addition, visitors will be able to see if their traffic has been diverted to a malicious website in order to steal their personal information in case they cannot find the lock icon at the O Globo address.
The implementation of HTTPS on the O Globo website will also allow the newspaper to offer new services that depend on the adoption of the secure protocol. The first one, already in advanced tests, is sending notifications to the readers, like the publication of urgent news, within the window of the readers’ browser.
HTTPS gives us the possibility to bring new services to the site, and the one of notifications is only the first — says Coelho. — Other services that also demand safety in navigation will come later.
The executive also notes that to enjoy the benefits of the new security protocol readers do not need to register or log in to the O Globo website. To do this, simply make sure your browser is updated. Two of the most used in the Windows operating system — Chrome and Firefox — do this automatically. Internet Explorer must be at least version 8, and Windows in version 7. On Apple computers, in turn, Safari and the operating system should be Mountain Lion 10.8 or later, while iPhones and gadgets using iOS, such as iPads, the installed system must be from version 6 on. Finally, on Android phones, safe browsing can be accessed from version 4. Since May 2, all the accesses that meet these requirements are automatically being directed to the secure pages.
Safe browsing with HTTPS is available in all the news, new and old ones, of the main O Globo editorials. The exceptions are the pages of bloggers and columnists, whose diversity of publishing tools and content producers make it difficult to implement the protocol, so they will not adopt it for a while, explains Coelho. On the other hand, within two months the website of the newspaper “Extra”, also edited by O Globo’s parent, Infoglobo, will implement the technology. Infoglobo is part of Brazilian Media Holding Group, Grupo Globo.
Fonte: O GLOBO
Billy D. Aldea-Martinez, heads up Latin America and Brazil for Piano, the world’s leader SaaS Platform that allows media companies to launch Direct Monetization models, such as metering and paywall solutions for digital content and user data analysis.
Billy is also a Digital Monetization Strategy consultant and exclusively works with Latin America’s largest media groups, such as Editora Abril (Brazil), Grupo Globo (Brazil) as well as Grupo Copesa (Chile).
He also serves as Board Advisor & Angel Investor for adtech & martech startups such as Start-up Chile, Start-up Peru, Parallel18 (PR) Admetricks and Starter Daily.
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