Techsurvivors

Archives => 2007 => Topic started by: goodear on June 29, 2007, 12:13:12 PM

Title: Site Certificates/Netscape
Post by: goodear on June 29, 2007, 12:13:12 PM
I use Netscape 7 on my Mac, system 9.2. When I go to eBay, a pop-up says" unable to verify the identity of secureebaystatic.com as a trusted site...Examine site certificate...are you willing to accept..." After I click OK, my correct user ID and password come up, and I am able to continue w/o problem. This doesn't happen with Internet Explorer, but IE doesn't give the webpages as nicely as Netcape.

I don't understand this thing. What does the warning mean, in simple English, and what if anything can I do to prevent it from coming up again?
Title: Site Certificates/Netscape
Post by: Gregg on June 29, 2007, 12:56:20 PM
I think it's just a way of you your permission to be "checked out" by the web site in question.

Go to your Edit menu, and select Preferences. Under Privacy & Security, you should find Certificates. (I use Mozilla, which is very similar to Netscape. Your selections might be hiding elsewhere.)

From here, you are able to Manage your Certificates. I don't have any, so that makes managing them a snap. wink.gif
Title: Site Certificates/Netscape
Post by: tacit on June 29, 2007, 01:13:14 PM
In simple English, what it is saying is this:

"When a Web browser is made, the computer programmer who makes it gives it a list of 'trusted' Web site certificate companies. You are connecting to a Web site that has a secure certificate, but the certificate was created by a company I have never heard of. I do not know if I should trust the certificate because I have never heard of the company who issued it."

This is one of the problems with using old Web browsers. A Web browser can only trust security certificates issued by "certificate authorities" that it knows about. eBay uses a Verisign Class 3 Extended Validation security certificate. This type of security certificate was first developed in August 2003. Netscape 7.0.2 was released in February of 2003; it desn't know how to recognize this type of certificate.

I know you've probably heard this before, but... as time goes on, you can expect to encounter problems like this more and more often. Perhaps it's time to leave OS 9 behind?
Title: Site Certificates/Netscape
Post by: goodear on June 29, 2007, 01:20:56 PM
My Security Setting is checked as follows:
"show an alert before submitting a form through email"

This one is unchecked: "When entering a page that is secure/not secure".

"Trust sites with credentials issued by the following Certificate Authorities":
(and then it lists many of them)
Now on this last one, am I supposed to add a site manually? And if so, how?
The four button choices are as follows:
•Reset to defaults
•Set password
•View...
•Delete

So I don't understand how to find the correct words/symbols for the Certificate Authorities to add to the list, or even if I am SUPPOSED
to do that.


QUOTE(Gregg @ Jun 29 2007, 12:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I think it's just a way of you your permission to be "checked out" by the web site in question.

Go to your Edit menu, and select Preferences. Under Privacy & Security, you should find Certificates. (I use Mozilla, which is very similar to Netscape. Your selections might be hiding elsewhere.)

From here, you are able to Manage your Certificates. I don't have any, so that makes managing them a snap. wink.gif
Title: Site Certificates/Netscape
Post by: Gregg on June 29, 2007, 07:14:29 PM
Getting back to the problem you described, and digesting what Tacit posted (in his usual clear, concise, and easy to understand manner) perhaps this is a little annoyance you'll have to live with. It's not keeping you from doing what you want to due in the end, so, get a cup of coffee and then resume your browsing...

I'll switch to OS(insert Roman Numeral here) whenever OS9 (or the other software that it can run) will no longer do something that I just cannot live without. I'll have to replace some of that other software too, but my wife bought our son Microsoft Office for Mac, and as a teacher, the version she got came with 3 licenses, so waiting has paid off already.