Home / Glossary / HTTP & HTTPS

HTTP & HTTPS

SFBy Sitraka Forler · Lecturer, Durham Business School·Updated 13 September 2026· About this site

The request and response protocol of the web; HTTPS is the same protocol, encrypted.

In HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), a client sends a request such as GET (fetch data) or POST (send data), and the server returns a status code (1xx information, 2xx success, 3xx redirect, 4xx client error, 5xx server error). HTTPS is HTTP over TLS (Transport Layer Security), on default port 443 instead of 80. TLS encrypts traffic and checks the site's certificate, but a padlock does not make a site trustworthy.

# status line and headers, then the body
curl -i https://example.com
curl -i -X POST https://api.example.com/orders \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"currency": "EUR", "quantity": 10}'