I have had several frustrating exchanges with my local utility http://www.btes.net/ over their lack of https. How does one get a company like this to listen to sound advice?
Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
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Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#2There is no excuses anymore when its free from https://letsencrypt.org. Maybe they need to be hacked and data exposed?
Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#3Strangely their billing, account login, and similar are via HTTPS. Only their sign up form remains insecure. This might sound odd but have you considered writing them a physical letter? Often these bypass their first line technical support and might be seen by someone who could act (or at least make them aware of the issue).
Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#4There is no excuses anymore when its free from https://letsencrypt.org . Maybe they need to be hacked and data exposed?
Good news. The customer service rep said they are forwardning my request to the Networking Team after I shared https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs... and pointed out how easy it is to steal login info.
A video is worth a billion words.
Hopefully, Networking doesn't blow it off.
Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#5You neglect to mention that they also do internet.
And for anyone else, yes they do have account log in.
@OP find another supplier, or if they're a monopoly complain to the regulator.
Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#6I also wished voting with your money/feet helped, but probably not the case if not enough people care.
Fun story, I went to Iceland 2 years ago. When I did research for car rental, it seemed like car rental companies in Iceland are notorious for ripping you off/charging you for damage you didn't have etc. I spent hours reading reviews and came down to only 2 companies that didn't have such reviews out of dozens.
I was about to book with one of them, and only when I was all the way to the credit card step I realized they weren't on https. And I only found out because Chrome warned me -- I had just assumed everyone with credit card forms would be on https. So I stopped there and booked with the other company I found.
A day later they emailed me (I filled out my email info already when I stopped at payments), I guess they had drop off tracking. I told them the reason I didn't book was because they didn't have https. They said thanks and will have their web team look at it.
Last year (1 year after my trip) I checked their site out of curiosity. The payments form still didn't have https.
Re: Ask HN: How to get an electic company to got HTTPS?
#7You neglect to mention that they also do internet. And for anyone else, yes they do have account log in. @OP find another supplier, or if they're a monopoly complain to the regulator.
I'll look into the regulator. Thanks.