forum website intermittently "not secure"

[Acorn]

Hi, for the past three days, when I have visited the forum in the morning UK time I get stopped by a message telling me this website is not secure and my connectin is not private. But visiting in the evening, UK time, each time it's been fine and I've had no error messages. I'm a bit puzzled by the intermittency!

[Deledrius]

There are some users who post images from places like Photobucket, sometimes even in their signatures, and aren't using HTTPS for the resource. That can cause mixed content warnings from your browser. It's unfortunate, but currently unavoidable for places like this forum in which people can post things from random other sites.

[Acorn]

Thanks, Deledrius. As far as I can tell, the intermittent "not secure" message flips on or off even when there have been no new posts to these forums. So it's quite a puzzle as to what is triggering the change. Again, today, I had the message this morning, but by 5pm UK time it's apparently ok again.

[Deledrius]

Another potential source of that message is that some SSL certs are provided by CAs in which browsers are removing their trust. A page with content served across such a connection might produce that error as well.

[Tsar Hoikas]

I've been planning to post about the issue Deledrius raises above but have been really busy...

We got our SSL certificate back before StartCom was bought out by WoSign. They were a legit, trustworthy entity when we got ours. Unfortunately, once WoSign bought them out, the combined company started doing some questionable things that makes all of StartCom's certificates look shady. I know Google Chrome on my phone does not like the certificate any more. I don't know about the desktop version of Chrome. Firefox is still happy. I quite frankly don't care if Internet Explorer works. Your mileage may vary. I assure you that no matter how many red flags are thrown up, the GoW website is safe, however.

In the coming weeks, I will devote some time to acquiring a new certificate. Probably next weekend. I will likely be using Let's Encrypt... which has its own issues, but I don't think they will cause browsers to revoke their trust.

[Acorn]

Thanks, Adam and Deledrius, for the explanation and reassurance. I have been encountering the issue when using Chrome on my laptop. Great to know that Firefox still treats the website appropriately, I'll swap to that for the time being.

[Charura]

I quite frankly don't care if Internet Explorer works

ROFLOL

[Tsar Hoikas]

This issue should now be fixed.

[Acorn]

Yay! Thank you