[HTTPS-Everywhere] Blekko search engine rewriting search results to point to HTTPS URLs

[Greg Lindahl]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 01:47:19AM -0400, mezzanine at Safe-mail.net wrote:

> Of possible interest, it appears that the Blekko search engine
> automatically rewrites some of its search results

Indeed, we are. Most of our rewrites come out of the HTTPS Everywhere
rulesets, thanks! We think this is a way to improve privacy for a lot
more people than just those who might download a browser
extension. We've defaulted this feature on in our search engine for a
long time now.

We have a button people can push to complain when we've broken the web
for them. We get a few complaints a day, mostly from countries which I
imagine are pretty enthusiastic at blocking encrypted access to
naughty websites (like facebook, youtube, etc.) I generally email such
people and they never reply back: probably most of them don't speak
English.

I got one a few days ago from someone in the Dominican Republic, who
pushed the "this link is broken" button 3 times on a YouTube link, and
once added a comment in Spanish that clearly said that all YouTube
links were broken. The link worked for me. He also didn't respond to
my email with an attempt at Spanish, but I thought I'd mention it
here: do you guys have any idea how much breakage is being caused by
https blocks in various countries?

The set of urls which attract complaints is very limited: facebook,
twitter, and youtube. Of course, these are the most popular searches
at all search engines, "navigational" searches.

-- greg