On Thursday, web search giant Google announced via a post published to the Google Security Blog that the company’s Chrome browser will soon start issuing a warning to users when they access non-secure websites.

According to the announcement, the warning to Chrome users accessing websites which are not securing their passwords or credit card numbers properly will start being issued by the browser from January 2017.

The announcement marks an early move in Google’s plan to bring about a fundamental change in the way encryption is viewed on the Internet.

About the warning to be issued to users by Chrome browser starting January next year, Google said that the browser will not block users from accessing non-secure sites; rather, it will alert them when they visit an address which does not use an encrypted connection.

Drawing attention to the fact that websites which have ‘HTTPS’ added before the URL indicate an additional security level to normal web browsing to protect users against hackers, as compared to a non-secure ‘HTTP’ connection, Google said in a statement: "When you load a website over HTTP, someone else on the network can look at or modify the site before it gets to you."