This is an important issue, but as the article says, Auth Basic over SSL is perfectly secure (if you don't redirect 80 to 443 of course). And since it is so simple to set up and use, I can see why some providers would use it (I do for example).

Summary of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/516fc7e340d4a84c4100020e/why-the-hell-d...