Comment by eridius
8 years ago
You seem to be missing the point.
If the company is handling sensitive data, such as credit card information or medical information, there's already regulations to handle that. There's literally no point in trying to add regulations around Flexible SSL specifically, since the usage of Flexible SSL likely already contravenes the regulations for that sensitive data and therefore companies handling that data shouldn't be using it.
If the company isn't handling sensitive data, then again there's no point in adding regulations around Flexible SSL, because what possible benefit would that serve?
Flexible SSL is simply one tool that websites can use. It's intended to be used by sites that would otherwise just be using http://. Sites that do protect more sensitive information certainly could use it, but that would be a bad decision on their part. And we don't need regulations around it specifically, because there's also a million other bad decisions that company could make that would expose that data, and there's really nothing special about Flexible SSL that makes it in particular need of regulation.
Some information might be sensitive for the end user, but not legally protected. Even something as simple as their name or pseudonym can be serious for some people.
I think serving a site over https:// amounts to advertising that information sent to/from that site will not be sent unencrypted over the public internet, and users will use that when deciding what things are or aren't safe to enter into that site. Surely there are regulations that already apply to that? And in any case regulations are only one of the options you mentioned; we should be applying a lot more shame to CloudFlare and anyone who uses "Flexible SSL".