EFF's Encrypt the Web project aims to fix that, and Let's Encrypt—a collaboration with Mozilla, the University of Michigan, Cisco, Akamai and many other sponsoring organizations—should be a huge step forward.

The larger barrier, though, is difficulty. Once someone has purchased a certificate, they need to install it on their website, a time consuming and error-prone process that requires significant technical skill, which is a cost in itself.

Yahoo has confirmed that it is preventing some people from accessing their email if they are using ad-blocking software in their browser.

Ad-blocking advocates say disabling advertisements can improve smartphone battery life and reduce mobile data usage.

It can also prevent people being tracked by advertisers online and protect devices from malware that could be served up if an advertising network is compromised.

Less than 24 hours after BT Openreach chief Joe Garner quit the telco's troubled infrastructure division, BT customers all over the UK are saying they can't get online – with the apparent network outage possibly taking up to three days to fix.

El Reg has seen angry customers from towns not on that list tweeting at the telco asking what's going on – but none appear to have realised that the outage may take up to three days to be fixed.

“What I meant was that the internet was over for anyone who wants to get paid, and I was right about that,” he says. “Tell me a musician who’s got rich off digital sales. Apple’s doing pretty good though, right?”

The Tor Project made the allegations more explicit, posting a blog entry accusing CMU of accepting $1 million to conduct the attack. A spokesperson for CMU didn't exactly deny the allegations but demanded better evidence and stated that he wasn't aware of any payment.

Without oversight from the University research board, they exploited a vulnerability in the Tor protocol to conduct a traffic confirmation attack, which allowed them to identify Tor client IP addresses and hidden services. They ran this attack for five months and potentially de-anonymized thousands of users.

Last week Microsoft nixed the unlimited storage option from its OneDrive service. Meanwhile, Comcast started billing users extra in some cities if they gobble more than 300GB of bandwidth per month. Last month Sprint followed the lead of most of its competitors and began throttling download speeds of its “unlimited” data plan for customers who exceed 23GB per month of data usage.

What it comes down to is that Comcast and others have recognized that heavy users will generally pay more for their service than average users.

He said keeping web browsing data was not for spying on the public but to see "for example, whether a suspect has downloaded a terrorist manual".

The minister for internet safety and security, Baroness Shields, had said she recognised the "essential role" that strong encryption played in protecting people's details.

But she added the government still wanted tech companies to be able to unscramble "targeted" data and hand it over when required.

The Facebook CEO repeated that ambition during a town hall meeting Wednesday at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. Zuckerberg told the audience of students and professionals that the social network's mission is to make the Internet accessible to the entire world, them included.

"The people who are not yet on the Internet can't sign an online petition pushing for increased access to the Internet," he said. "We all have a moral responsibility to look out for people who don't have the Internet, and make sure that the rules that benefit us, don't get twisted for people who don't have a voice."

There are a number of standard metrics we can throw at each browser, as well as a number of standards-based compliance tests, and it's these that we'll be focusing on.

Microsoft still has a long way to go in both IE and Edge when it comes to HTML5. It's improving, and most people won't notice any detrimental effects, but it still gives developers a headache.

There is no dominant browser generally speaking. What it will come down to is features.

The BBC is taking measures against the unauthorized use of its iPlayer service by actively blocking UK VPN services. The measures aim to prevent foreigners from accessing iPlayer without permission, but they're also blocking many legitimate UK citizens from surfing the Internet securely.

This effectively stops foreigners and expats from accessing the service, but it also affects license paying UK citizens who use a VPN to browse the Internet securely. They will now have to disconnect their VPN if they want to access iPlayer.