# HTTP,HTTPS and port 443



## Moc

Hello all, this is my first time in this forum. I have question which I think belongs in this section.:4-dontkno 

I am trying to access a website that starts with http but then has :443 in its URL. e.g. http://www.example.com:443/ Does this mean the site is secure? Is this any different from https://www.example.com. 

I cannot get to the site, just getting page cannot be found error. I know I have port 443 open because I can access banking sites fine and also all the security settings in my IE are checked and IE has 128 bit cipher.

I was wondering if anyone could explain the protocols a little bit more or suggest any good sites with this sort of information.

Thanks:sayyes: 

Moc


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## gamerman0203

from my understanding, you personally don't have ports to be open in regards to SSL. The server that is hosting the site needs to have that port open so you can access it securly. I have never heard of accessing a secure port in the fashion of just stating the number, as in your first example. To my knowledge the only way to access a secured site is by having 'https' in the url.

If you are getting the 404 error, then simply the page isn't there. At least it's not there under a secured port. Have you tried accessing it under just http?


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## Skie

You specifically need to use "https://" when accessing a secured website on port 443. Doing it the way you specified above will just display a "400 Bad Request" error and may include a 404 error. DO NOT trust any site that uses "http://example.com:443" as you can easily set up a non secured web server to run on port 443 or any other port for that matter. Web browsers are specifically designed to use "https" for secured sites. Using "http" will not load any of the encryption.


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