[Sussex] SSL Certs

[Mark Harrison]

Iain,

Is this a site that faces the public, or one that only you / your team uses?

If it's public-facing, then you need to pay. What you're actually paying for
is the "validation" from an established company that you are who you say you
are. As such, the mainstream browsers will accept that validation without
question.

If it's personal (for instance, the admin pages on my sites), then I just
roll my own certificate. The browsers still accept it, but pop up a window
that says "This certificate isn't from a trusted source - are you sure you
want to carry on?" (or some equivalent text.)

The latter is free, but acceptable for personal use :-)

The former is, sadly, what you need if you want the general public to not be
scared at using your site.

M.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Iain Stevenson" <iain at iainstevenson.com>
To: "LUG email list for the Sussex Counties" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 11:28 AM
Subject: [Sussex] SSL Certs


>
> My web site SSL cert seems to have run out but I don't really want to pay
> for a new one :-)  Paying lots for a few lines of alphanumeric characters
> generated by a computer has always struck me as one of the dodgier
excesses
> of capitalism ....
>
> Does anyone know where you can get a wildcarded cert that works with
> mozilla and IE for free?
>
>  Iain
>
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>