Living Dangerously

How to unlock Living Dangerously in Cheevos. Visit a site over unencrypted HTTP, no lock icon in sight. Worth 10 XP.

The story

Partner. No lock. No encryption. You went anyway.

The modern web trained everyone to check for the little padlock before trusting a page. Most sites have it now. You found one of the ones that doesn't, and you visited it regardless.

Cache noted the absence immediately. An unencrypted connection is one where things can, in principle, fall out along the way, or be seen by someone who isn't you and isn't the site. He is not fond of this. He wants to be clear about that before he says anything else.

The turn: Cache filed the item anyway, because he files everything, but he attached a warning label, which he almost never does. This is one of the only entries in the whole Stash that comes with one. It is not a badge of recklessness so much as a record: the open, unlocked web still exists, in smaller and smaller pockets, and you found one of them.

The catalog entry

HTTP VISIT Acquired: Navigated to a site using unencrypted HTTP. Condition: Exposed. The lock icon is absent. Rarity: Uncommon. HTTPS is the default now. Cache's Notes: Cache notes that an unencrypted connection is a connection where things can fall out. Or be picked up by others. He does not recommend this. He logged it. He logs everything. But he wants you to know that he prefers HTTPS and that this is one of the few items in the Stash that came with a warning label.

Spoiler: how to unlock it

This one is getting harder to find on purpose, which is exactly why Cache values it.

  1. Find a site that still serves pages over plain http:// instead of https://. Old personal sites, some internal tools, and certain legacy pages are the most likely candidates.
  2. Navigate to it directly.
  3. Notice the browser's address bar warning, often "Not Secure" or a crossed-out lock, confirming the connection isn't encrypted.

HTTPS wraps a site's traffic in TLS encryption, which scrambles the data between your browser and the server so it can't be read or altered in transit, for example by someone else on the same public WiFi network. Plain HTTP sends everything, including passwords typed into a form, as readable plain text. Browsers have spent the last decade pushing sites toward HTTPS by default: Chrome and Firefox both flag HTTP pages as "Not Secure" in the address bar, and most modern sites redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS automatically, which is exactly why this one has gotten rarer over time.

Where it fits in the Stash

Living Dangerously sits in the small, clearly labeled section of the Stash reserved for things Cache keeps but does not endorse. For the story of the raccoon who preserves everything, warnings included, read the story.