You may no longer see Extended Validation Certificate (EV Certificate for short) indicators for websites in the URL bar in Chrome and Firefox browsers. The next Chrome 77 will get this change and the browser will show EV information in the Page Info dialog, Mozilla to follow Google and to remove the EV indicator from identity block in Firefox 70 and to display that in identity panel instead.
EV Certificates are generally used by major brands and e-commerce sites to make online transactions secure. The green address bar for EV indicator does occupy space on the address bar and is one of the reasons expressed by Chrome Security UX team for ditching the UI, apart from that, the team believes “EV UI does not protect users as intended” and thinks page info is better to place for it to live.
Google recently announced about the change by saying”As part of series of data-driven changes to Chrome security indicators, the Chrome security UX team is announcing a change to the Extended Validation (EV) certificate indicator on certain websites starting in Chrome 77.”
Here is how Chrome 76 stable displays EV SSL badge in the browser for a website and check the screenshot how it appears in Chrome 77.
Google says starting with Chrome version 77, the EV information can still be accessed by clicking the lock icon in Page info dialog.
Mozilla today announced, they follow Chrome path on showing EV cert badge in browser UI and said “The effectiveness of EV has been called into question numerous times over the last few years, there are serious doubts whether users notice the absence of positive security indicators and proof of concepts have been pitting EV against domains https://www.typewritten.net/writer/ev-phishing/ for phishing”.
Starting Firefox 70 browser will show normal lock icon for EV certificates.
End users have nothing to do with these changes, as they even may not aware of EV certs unless they’re regular visitors to PayPal, Github and other sites that use EV certs. As the web rapidly moving towards HTTPS, expect lock icon to disappear from URL bar as well in the near future.