Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Question:

https is a URI scheme that is, aside from the scheme token, syntactically identical to the http scheme used for normal HTTP connections, but which signals the browser to use an added encryption layer of SSL/TLS to protect the traffic. SSL is especially suited for HTTP since it can provide some protection even if only one side of the communication is authenticated. This is the case with HTTP transactions over the Internet, where typically only the server is authenticated