SSL Problem Resolution
General Web Users with SSL Certificate Problems
Digital certificates provide security to websites by encrypting sensitive data and verfying the identity of the websites that are secured.
We provide these certificates as a service to website owners to ensure the security of online communications.
SSL problem messages and warnings are often displayed in an attempt to protect website users from potentially compromising situations. However, an SSL error message may also indicate a problem that is entirely innocuous in nature. In this second case, there is often an issue either with the website you are connecting to or even possibly a misconfiguration on your own end.
If you ever encounter an SSL related warning (such as a security certificate mismatch, certificate not trusted, or secure and non-secure items, see below), you may want to hold off on entering your login details or credit card information until you can make sure you are not in a compromising online situation.
Learn to Protect Against SSL Fraud
To resolve a problem that you may be having, the first thing that you want to check is that your computer's time and date are accurate. Because expired or not-yet-valid security certificates throw up warnings, having the date on your machine wrong could potentially cause security errors on many secure sites that you access.
Additionally, if you have recently enabled new secure settings in a website, try disabling those settings and seeing if the warning messages go away. While this is not fix, it can give you a point to work from when communicating with the website owner to help them know how to fix the problems.
One of the best things you can do if you encounter an error is to find a third-party source for a phone number of the organization whose website you are on and try calling the organization to let them know about the issue, or to try to handle whatever business you needed to handle with them over the phone. If they are having a problem on their end, they should be able to fix it so other users are not inconvenienced.
If you are having a problem with the website of a large corporation that may be difficult to reach by telephone, make sure to exercise discretion and never enter personal information in a website that throws an SSL error message.
Website Administrators & Fixing an SSL Problem
We offer a variety of tools for website administrators to investigate and troubleshoot potential SSL problems.
- Start with our SSL diagnostic online tool to check your installation for issues.
- If you are using a Windows based server, you can use our Windows SSL Utility to resolve the most common certificate problems.
- Otherwise, if you just need help installing your certificate or creating a CSR, check out our SSL setup instruction guide.
- If none of that gets the job done, try checking out our list of additional certificate issues.
Guide to SSL Problem Fixing for Users and Administrators
If you are a DigiCert customer and encounter any SSL problem that you cannot resolve using the instructions on this page, feel free to give us a call today for live support!
