SSL Certificates and Your Browser

Contents
   - SSL Certificates and Your Browser
         - The Issues
      - Your connection is not private
      - This Connection is Untrusted
      - There is a problem with this website's security certificate.
      - (unsafe) Back to safety

Below you can see examples of how browsers deal with websites that are untrusted. However, none of the warnings below prevent you from clicking on through.

What does it mean to be "untrusted?"

The problem here is that the admin.befa.org administration website is 'protected' via SSL. That is, https, instead of http. So when you connect to this website you are using an encrypted connection.

Why the error?

The error occurs because we (me, actually) decided to use a self-signed certificate, rather than buying a "trusted" certificate.

Here are the issues as I see them.

The Issues

Even though it's considered an untrusted connection, the connection is still secure
The self-signed certificate is free
We don't store credit card information or personal info here, so not really that big of an issue
It's bad to get in the habit of ignoring warnings
It makes people distrust the site
Godaddy.com sells trusted certificates for $69.00/yr
Some places apparently have free certficates

So I'm looking again at buying a certificate. If it's free or pretty cheap, I'll probably get one. Until then, click on through to the website.