Warning for 'Unsafe Site'.............

[Oscar]

Last night, I went into the site for my library and had a notice that it's 'Security certificate has expired' and that the site was unsafe and words to the effect that I proceed at my own peril.

Surely this can't be right - no hacker is going to attempt to half-hitch a Local Government site?? I can call in there tomorrow, but this has me mystified.

Any thoughts.......

Gwyn

[WendyPusey]

Certificates are used to verify the identity of the website among other things. It is most likely that the certificate has only just expired and the admins haven't loaded the new one yet. Doesn't mean anything is wrong with the site.

[Oscar]

The only thing which bothered me, Wendy, is that I sneaked a look at the site. I keep my details logged in (being lazy), so that I just have to press 'Log in', but they didn't show, so I quit rather quickly!

Gwyn

[TrevorFranklin]

A certificate is needed to allow swapping of encryption keys to keep data safe while it is being passed between your PC and the website server.
Without a current certificate, it cannot correctly do this process, hence you not seeing that you can automatically log-in as you are used to because your web browser is stopping any automatic log-in as part of its security features.

This should clear up when they renew their certificate

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/About-certificate-errors

[Oscar]

Thanks for the links, Trevor.

Gwyn