HTTP is Hyper Text Transform Protocol and is transmitted over the wire via PORT 80(TCP). You use HTTP when you are browsing the web. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer, or HTTP over SSL) is a Web protocol developed by Netscape and built into its browser that encrypts and decrypts user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web server. HTTPS is really just the use of Netscape's Secure Socket Layer (SSL) as a sublayer under its regular HTTP application layering. (HTTPS uses port 443 instead of HTTP port 80 in its interactions with the lower layer, TCP/IP.) SSL uses a 40-bit key size for the RC4 stream encryption algorithm, which is considered an adequate degree of encryption for commercial exchange. Although it may be encrypted does not mean its safe, there are tools out there to decrypt the information being sent over the wire, although its more difficult to do so.