Who said a word about looking at a certificate?
I said exactly the words I meant.
> I don't look at the browser bar or symbols on it. I care what my bookmarks do, what URLs I grab from history do, what my open tabs do, and what happens when I type things in.
Without the identity component, I can't trust that those things I care about are insulated from local interference. With the identity component, I say it's fine to connect to random public wifi. Without it, it wouldn't be.
That's the relevant level. "Is it ok to connect to public wifi?" With identity validation, yes. Without, no.
When you say identity, you mean “the identity of someone that convinced a certificate authority that they controlled walmart.com’s dns record at some point in the last 47 days, or used some sort of out of band authentication mechanism”.
You don’t mean “Walmart”, but 99% of the population thinks you do.
Is it OK to trust this for anything important? Probably not. Is OK to type your credit card number in? Sure. You have fraud protection.
So what you're saying is that you actually understand the identity portion is critical to how the web is used and you're just cranky. It's ok. Take a walk, get a bite to eat. You'll feel better.
I’m not the person you were arguing with. Just explaining your misunderstanding.