Darkshade now supports SSL encryption.  So if you're visiting from a location that watches your traffic, or at some coffee house and worried someone is sniffing your packets, you can use the https version of the site.

So instead of http:// you can go to https://

You'll likely receive a big ugly warning the first time you try.  It'll look different depending on which browser you're using.  All it is telling you is, "Hey, this guy signed his own SSL certificate.  Are you sure you want to accept it?"  Go ahead and accept it for this site, and then you'll be enjoying encrypted protection.

A self-signed certificate is all that is needed to protect the connection.  It costs money to get a Trusted Certificate Authority to sign my SSL certificate.

I recently have decided to switch back to Chrome from Firefox, because I feared my computer freezes and blue-screens were due to something Firefox was doing on my system.

However, this means I get this "not-secure" warning when I visit the site via https.  Following these instructions, I was able to tell Windows that I trust the darkshade certificate: https://newspaint.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/importing-self-signed-ssl-server-certificate-into-google-chrome/

Now I don't get that warning any more, unless I change servers or the site gets hijacked.  Either way, good time to get the warning, as opposed to every time.