The Wikimedia foundation, the nonprofit that runs the online encyclopedia, announced that it has started switching all its sites to HTTPS by default starting on Friday. The site becomes the latest to join an ever-growing movement that promotes more encryption across the web to protect users' privacy and freedom of speech.

"To be truly free, access to knowledge must be secure and uncensored," Wikimedia's Yana Welinder, Victoria Baranetsky, and Brandon Black, wrote in the announcement. "With this change, the nearly half a billion people who rely on Wikipedia and its sister projects every month will be able to share in the world's knowledge more securely."

Switching HTTPS by default on a website creates a secure, encrypted connection between the user and the site, making it harder for spies and malicious hackers to monitor what pages the user visits on the website.