Comment by webprofusion

Comment by webprofusion a day ago

8 replies

People who make a strong distinction between TLS and SSL are indicating that they know the difference and think you should too, but at a practical level it's the difference between .doc and .docx (fundamentally different but interchangeable to the layman). The boots on the ground mostly care about getting https to work and have minimal consideration for it's inner workings.

entuno 16 hours ago

The main issue was explaining to the layman that TLSv1.0 was in fact newer and better than SSLv2 and SSLv3. I remember having quite a few discussions about this with people who assumed that the bigger number must be better..

ozim 13 hours ago

It is like ages since SSL was obsoleted but people still refer to the name meaning encrypted network traffic.

Would be much easier if everyone just talks about TLS to mean modern encrypted network traffic. Mention SSL if you really use it because you have legacy system running.

  • dylan604 10 hours ago

    People still say Twitter instead of X. Of course people are going to continue using the name used when something was first introduced and engrained into their day to day vs the rebrand. It would be funny if ssl.com just redirects to tls.com and get upset when people still refer to it as ssl. The only successful rebrand attempts have been company names like when Comcast became Xfinity or MCI becoming Worldcom type situations

    • unaindz 5 hours ago

      I agree with all except your example. TLS and SSL are about the same memorability wise, Twitter and X are not. If we were talking about a porn website it would be the inverse.

      • dylan604 4 hours ago

        The fact that they still refer to them as tweets is another thing. What would they call them instead, exes? Those are best kept in Texas.

  • commandlinefan 10 hours ago

    TLS is also awkward to _say_, whereas SSL just sounds right.

    Plus the most popular implementation of TLS remains the OpenSSL implementation.

  • bux93 13 hours ago

    I've taken to saying HTTPS, which is far more widely understood and usually accurate enough.