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Comment by QuantumNomad_ | Hacker News Reader

example.com is also great for that reason when something fails about a captive portal on a public WiFi.

I open my web browser and go to http://example.com and get redirected to the captive portal page again and retry completing what they need from me to get internet access.

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Fun fact, this is almost exactly how active portal detection is done in the OS/browser!

https://gist.github.com/skull-squadron/edb8c0122f902013304c0...

Yep :) I just find example.com easier to remember and quicker to type than any of the OS or browser makers own URLs like

- http://captive.apple.com/

- http://connectivitycheck.gstatic.com/generate_204

- http://detectportal.brave-http-only.com/

Plus, it feels nice to depend on the reserved domain name example.com instead of relying on a domain that any one specific corporation has to maintain :D

Also http://detectportal.firefox.com. And http://neverssl.com was set up for this purpose while being a bit easier to remember :)

I remember a while back neverssl.com would happily serve HTTPS requests! Another good alternative is http://httpforever.com/

What gives you confidence example.com won't start serving the HTTPS redirect though? There isn't any reason they wouldn't, and given that browsers are clearly tending towards showing big scary warnings to even accessing something over cleartext, I wouldn't be surprised if they flipped that switch just to avoid confusing noobs.

True, that could happen. If it does do that then I will have to switch over to remembering a different URL instead. But as long as it hasn’t I will keep using http://example.com :)

I have been using neverssl.com for this same purpose :)

My only concern would be that example.com doesn't promise to never do the 'required SSL' thing.

I use neverssl.com for this purpose because it is designed to resist caching.

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