"Let’s Encrypt is currently used by more than 280 million websites,
issuing between two and three million certificates per day. I often
think about how we got here, looking for some nugget of wisdom that
might be useful to others."<p>I guess it's keep trying. Keep patiently explaining, educating and
building.<p>I remember people saying "You'll never be able to topple the certs
racket" - and here we are... in a age where every day I read about how
we'll 'never' be able to break the big-tech stranglehold and build a
distributed network owned by the people, 'never' have privacy and real
end-to-end encryption because 'nobody cares', 'never' have practical
p2p digital currencies of our own, and where we'll never have open,
verifiable hardware. Keep believing.
The main thing I'm thankful for Let's Encrypt for is breaking the idea that an SSL-secured website is somehow magically <i>less likely</i> to be phishing or even anything but claiming it's the data from the domain you connected to, without changes.<p>Mainly this was propagated by EV cert sellers, but it was all kinda silly.
God bless Let’s Encrypt. I used to tell my clients they need to cough up $100+/year for a cert and jump through a bunch of hoops to get it working. Now it’s built into the UI of many of the control panels I use and I simply click a button. The pre LE days were the dark ages.
Lets encrypt is a true marvel that blessed the world with easy quick automatable webpki and identity. The world is exponentially more private and secure from their actions. One of the most critical public services in the world.
I applaud the Let's Encrypt founders, past and current team for solving the automation problem that's plagued the SSL/TLS industry.<p>The yang to that ying is a lack trust. I have zero trust in a site owner using LE certs. Domain vetting only means control of the domain ... everything inside that beautifully encrypted traffic can be insightful, helpful or script kiddies scamming the vulnerable. If one finds the scam, LE <i>shrugs</i>, "not our problem bruh. We just issue certs to those who control the domain."<p>They single handedly reduced the price of entry for douchebag asshats ability to pretend someone they are not and harm a non-technical populace.<p>Two steps forward, one step backward.
Use of Lets Encrypt has grown steadily over the years:<p><a href="https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=ssl%3A%22Let+s+Encrypt%22#facet/overview" rel="nofollow">https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=ssl%3A%22Let+s+Encrypt...</a><p>Its use is also growing in mail servers so it's not limited to HTTPS:<p><a href="https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=ssl%3A%22Let+s+Encrypt%22#facet/port" rel="nofollow">https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=ssl%3A%22Let+s+Encrypt...</a>