Starting on September 1st, when you visit NCBI pages, you’ll see a green lock and https:// in the address bar instead of http://. This lets you know that you are really on an NCBI page – that our server identity is confirmed – and that your communication with our server is encrypted and private.
Here’s what to expect if you’re a general user or a scripter:
For general users
You will see the changes mentioned above – https:// and a green lock in the address bar – but you don’t have to update or change anything.
You don’t need to clear your cache or update any links to NCBI pages that you’ve put on your own webpages or shared with people. We will redirect all our pages to https://.
For scripters
To keep calls from failing, use https:, not http:.
Scripts that use HTTP POST to send data will not work once we transition from HTTP to HTTPS on September 1st.
If you'd like to know more about this change to HTTPS, please read The HTTPS-Only Standard [https://https.cio.gov/ ] from the Federal Chief Information Officers website.
rentrez doesn't using HTTP POST (which was never docmented anyway), so should be as simple as updating the base URL
rentrez doesn't using HTTP POST (which was never docmented anyway), so should be as simple as updating the base URL