The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - TFL and SSL ("invalid certificate" messages)

**tyme** · March 28, 2009, 01:36 PM

No, we cannot automagically redirect https to http to get around the problem. The https:// page headers (at least) have to be sent in order to redirect to http://, and no browsers are stupid enough to load and act on any page headers/contents before the user decides what to do about the questionable certificate. It would be a major security problem.

If the certificate is accepted there's no longer any reason to redirect, and if it's rejected then the page never loads at all so there can be no redirect.

And yeah, there have been a handful who were confused/worried by the warning, and at least one who complained knowing what was going on.

I think I'm going to start redirecting all external links to the http:// site as well. It won't fix the warning (see first paragraph of this post), but maybe it will keep people from propagating https:// links, and thus reduce the number of them getting indexed.

March 28, 2009, 01:36 PM	#6
tyme Staff Join Date: October 13, 2001 Posts: 3,355	No, we cannot automagically redirect https to http to get around the problem. The https:// page headers (at least) have to be sent in order to redirect to http://, and no browsers are stupid enough to load and act on any page headers/contents before the user decides what to do about the questionable certificate. It would be a major security problem. If the certificate is accepted there's no longer any reason to redirect, and if it's rejected then the page never loads at all so there can be no redirect. And yeah, there have been a handful who were confused/worried by the warning, and at least one who complained knowing what was going on. I think I'm going to start redirecting all external links to the http:// site as well. It won't fix the warning (see first paragraph of this post), but maybe it will keep people from propagating https:// links, and thus reduce the number of them getting indexed. __________________ “The egg hatched...” “...the egg hatched... and a hundred baby spiders came out...” (blade runner) “Who are you?” “A friend. I'm here to prevent you from making a mistake.” “You have no idea what I'm doing here, friend.” “In specific terms, no, but I swore an oath to protect the world...” (continuum) “It's a goal you won't understand until later. Your job is to make sure he doesn't achieve the goal.” (bsg)