In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:

  • Google says 77 percent of traffic is encrypted
  • Instagram changing posts based on “relevance”
  • A guilty plea in a celeb photo hacking case
  • Spying law advances in U.K.

The details:

  • Google reveals 77 percent of its online traffic is encrypted

Google is disclosing how much of the traffic to its search engine and other services is being protected from hackers as part of its push to encrypt allonline activity.

Encryption shields 77 percent of the requests sent from around the world to Google’sdata centers, up from 52 percent at the end of 2013, according to company statisticsreleased Tuesday.

The numbers cover all Google services expect its YouTube video site, which has more than 1 billion users. Google plans to add YouTube to its encryption breakdown by the end of this year.

Encryption is a security measure that scrambles transmitted information so it’s unintelligible if it’s intercepted by a third party.

Google began emphasizing the need to encrypt people’s online activities after confidential documents leaked in 2013 by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government had been vacuuming up personal data transferred over the Internet. The surveillance programs exploited gaping holes in unencrypted websites.

While rolling out more encryption on its services, Google has been trying to use the clout of its influential search engine to prod other websites to strengthen their security.

In August 2014, Google revised its secret formula for ranking websites in its search order to boost those that automatically encrypted their services. The change meant websites risked being demoted in Google’s search results and losing visitors if they didn’t embrace encryption.

  • Instagram says it will show posts in order of ‘relevance’

Instagram users could soon notice something different in their feeds: Instead of showing users the most recent posts first, the mobile photo-sharing app says it will give higher priority to posts that each user is likely to care about most.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s how Facebook decides what to show users of its online social network. Facebook Inc., which owns Instagram, has long used a complex formula to emphasize items it hopes will be “relevant” to each user, based on factors like whether the post came from a close friend or how the user responded to similar posts.

Instagram had previously acted more like rival Twitter, showing every post in reverse-chronological order. But as its audience has grown to more than 400 million users,Instagram says it’s become harder for users to keep up with the gusher of photos and videos posted by friends and other accounts they follow.

“This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most,” the service said in a message to users on Tuesday. Instagram plans to introduce the new formula gradually, giving weight to the kind of factors Facebook considers in its news feed. The service says users will still be able to find all the posts they used to see, although they won’t be in the same order.

That gradual introduction seems intended to avert any potential backlash from users who don’t like the new system. Facebook annoyed some early users when it changed from reverse-chronological ordering to its current formula several years ago. Twitter has also run into user complaints whenever it hints at changing its approach.

The change comes as Instagram is also showing more commercial messages. While the new formula doesn’t affect advertising, Instagram needs to keep users engaged and interested if it wants to maintain its audience for paid postings.

  • Pennsylvania man to admit stealing stars’ nude images

A Pennsylvania man has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into the email and online accounts of several female celebrities and stealing private information, including nude photos and videos, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Ryan Collins, 36, is accused of gaining access to more than 100 Google and Apple accounts, many belonging to famous women, between November 2012 and September 2014.

The Lancaster, Pennsylvania, man agreed to plead guilty to one count of gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Collins used a scheme called phishing in which he was able to get victims to provide information about their accounts in response to emails that appeared to come directly from Apple and Google, according to prosecutors. In some instances, he was able to obtain all the files his victims had stored online, including nude photos and videos.

No celebrities are identified in a plea agreement filed Tuesday. There is no evidence Collins posted any of the pilfered images online, the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated.

Collins was charged as part of an investigation into the posting of nude photos of numerous celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton, but he is not suspected of being involved in releasing those images, a news release stated.

Attorney information for Collins was not immediately available.

An investigation into who stole and posted images of Lawrence and dozens of other female stars is ongoing.

  • UK’s contentious online spying law passes test in Parliament

A proposed British law that gives police and spies unprecedented powers to look at the Internet browsing records of everyone in the country passed its first major vote in Parliament on Tuesday.

The country’s interior minister, Home Secretary Theresa May, vowed its intrusive reach would be governed by “the strongest safeguards” against abuse. Opening a House of Commons debate on the contentious bill, May said the law would provide “unparalleled openness and transparency” about the authorities’ surveillance powers.

The Investigatory Powers Bill gives law enforcement officials broad powers to obtain Internet connection records — a list of websites, apps and messaging services someone has visited, though not the individual pages they looked at or the messages they sent. It also requires telecommunications companies to keep records of customers’ Web histories for up to a year and to help security services gain access to suspects’ electronic devices.

The bill also makes official — and legal, with some restraints — the intelligence agencies’ existing ability to harvest vast amounts of bulk online data. The existence of the secretive collection schemes was exposed by U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.