scripts.mit.edu

Why is my connection to my website insecure?

When you visit your website, you might get a warning that “Your connection is not secure”, or “Your connection is not private”, or various other messages.

If the URL you’re accessing starts with “http://” instead of “https://”, then you simply need to change the URL that you’re accessing. You might also want to adjust your website so that this redirection happens automatically.

If you are using “https://”, you should select the option to get “Advanced” details, and see which of the following possibilities matches:

• If you’re told “The certificate is only valid for *.scripts.mit.edu,” or some variation on that, you don’t have a certificate installed for your particular website. Have somebody with administrator access to the website’s locker email scripts@mit.edu to request a certificate.

• If you’re told “Parts of this page are not secure (such as images)”, or some variation on that, then you have a valid certificate, but your website is not configured properly, and some parts of it are being downloaded from unencrypted websites. You should be able to use the web console in your browser to get a list of all the resources being downloaded, and find the ones that are insecure. You should then be able to adjust your website to retrieve them securely — usually just by changing “http” to “https” on the URL in your website’s source code or configuration.

If none of the above apply, or if you need any help, please send an email to scripts@mit.edu and include a screenshot of the error message that you’re seeing. As you can see, there are lots of different possible error messages, and we’ll have trouble diagnosing your problem unless you show us exactly what’s happening.