Letter to readers
There’ve been strange things happening … weird scenes inside the goldmine. On X today, one lady Xer, part of the daily X rounds … there were no posts of hers since April 25th … yesterday there was the current plus all previous posts.
She thought it strange … however, she too had noticed weird things happening overall. Just now, I went to sign into HQ and got this:
Rather than rant about it, it’s more 🤔. I do know about certificates, which it says I don’t have … it’s possible one has lapsed, I’m going to have to ask my tech man about it. Thing is … I got into the site myself without issue … but so might have a scriptkiddy or two from a major platform have done so, to wreak a bit of havoc.
Why? Well, two reasons … firstly, everyone of our point of view who’s a pundit has reported strange things … I’m thinking they don’t want things talked about … the second being me personally … that notice was for me, not for you … but as our readers, it’s only fair you’re aware.
Action? As admin, I’ll explore and monitor but if you feel caution is the better part of valour, that’s understandable. Also, I may need to go to UHCWP for awhile, which puts us more directly under control.
Update at 1623
If you’ve made it here, then I’m going to advise that UHC is the main site just for now … two of our chaps opted to visit and comment … it’s up to you.
My cunning plan is to run Unherdables over there from 1700 today until 0500 tomorrow morning … I’ll signpost over there, whether or not the site is fixed.
It’s also not a bad trial run for what might happen permanently in June or a bit later … I wrote a post on it you might recall. If regulars know that if there’s a glitch longer than an hour at HQ, then first checkpoint is UHC-WP, second is NOWP, third is Jstack, fourth OoL, finally a comment under one of Julia’s posts at her place if everything else falls through … then all seems covered.
So, I’m heading over to UHC-WP now … hoping NOWP will still be in operation as well.
I got the same thing on Krome. Went advanced where I was able to continue to this site, being warned that it is unsafe. It has happened before, maybe a month or more ago.
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JH: Been on the blower to the techie … he’s going to look at it but it can’t be till later, he has an evening commitment. I said don’t rush.
The traitors who run this joke of a parliament are so petrified they’ll stop at nothing to stop folk talking to each other online; or a pub, it seems. A D-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) is no doubt active and we can expect a lot more going forward. The message from the political class is shut up and give us your money. That is all.
You can get round it by using the ‘advanced’ button to reconnect with the site. Well I did anyway 🙂
Things seem back to normal.
I was on the site earlier today, and again, now, and see no issues. The certificate is fine, and no warnings. Am using Krome. I saw the error using edge browser and then some nginx panel.
I realised I had accidentally used http://etc (no security), and it doesn’t seem to be forwarding requests to the https “version”. Hope that helps
The issue you see is where a valid SSL certificate doesn’t exist. This can happen for various reasons, the main ones are; someone has inserted themselves in the way of the website and is impersonating that site to some users. Another is the certificate has expired, they can be valid for years but most are only valid for three months and although most systems automagically renew sometimes there are hiccups and software glitches that stop it. Site owners should check these regularly and update them manually if there are issues.
For normal browsing it isn’t an issue to accept the warning and continue, many sites still don’t actually have SSL certificates as they used to cost money until free providers came along like Let’s Encrypt.
Personally, I just continue unless it is a site that requests personal information such as credit card details. The risk is minimal if you are just browsing and you have an anti virus system as they usually check web pages.
SSL certs are usually replaced quickly when they expire because site admins get notified fairly quickly by concerned users and it takes just a minute to refresh them manually so if you are concerned.just click out and revisit later.
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JH: Ta for that.