O/T Computer Help

[Pinto Boy]

Does anyone know much about security certificates for IE7? I've tried google & MS KB but couldn't find what I'm after.

My niece is having trouble accessing her homework via her school's website. She can log into the secure server but can't navigate through the folders on the server.

When she first visits the website IE comes up with an error stating that the security certificate isn't issued by a company she trust - it is issued by the school. I'm tempted to tell them to install the certificate to see if this fixes the problem, but I don't want to screw up their PC as they are 100 miles away & I won't be able to fix it.

So the real question is... what does installing a security certificate actually do & is there any reason not to?

Cheers

Luke

[Frosty]

They have a security certificate installed, but it's just not from an official certificate body such as Verisign etc.

They have chosen to self-certify instead. This means data is still encrypted, but the domain name of the school does not match the domain name in their certificate, so your browser will issue a warning.

Have you checked the same site from another machine? Your daughter's machine might have some software to automatically reject browsing pages within a site with an unverified certificate.

[John Williams (Panda) - Joint Manchester AO]

get her to trust the certificate, it can do no harm and can always be removed....

I seem to recall there was a problem with vista and self signed certificates....

let me know if she is vista and i'll look in my book of spells.

cheers

John

[Pinto Boy]

Thanks guys - I'll check if it is Vista, though I think its XP.

[dombanks]

i get this problem with several sites on both vista and XP and it seems intermittent. the worst offender is FaceBook and sometimes the bank

if i ignore the warning i seem to be able to continue anyway

[Bean]

You need to add the SSL cert to your trusted sites, can't remember how in IE as I use Firefox but it should be quite simple