On January 1, 2016, people with old phones will be cut off from the Internet

Anyone who has a cell phone that is more than 5 years old will not be able to use it to access encrypted websites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, starting from the 1st of January, 2016. This is part of a plan to keep encrypted websites secure.

These encrypted sites use SHA-1, a cryptographic algorithm, to protect themselves against hackers. As from Jan. 1, 2016, only SHA-2 certificates will be accepted, which people who have older model phones don’t have.

CEO of CloudFlare Matthew Prince recently conducted research with Facebook showing as many as 7% of the world’s Internet users might be affected by this SHA-1 cut-off. It might not seem like a lot, but Prince says over 37m people could be affected.