What is your connection is not private error for websites?

Have you ever encountered “your connection is not private” error when you try to open a website?

In the old days, most websites used http:// addresses and it worked fine. Nowadays most likely if you try to open a website using a http address instead of https, you will get the “connection is not private error” (https means secured http) like below:

Because of the embrace of secure encryption enabled websites by major internet browsers, the default protocol for 75.3% of all the websites is now https according to w3techs’s statistics.

How Https is secured?

Https is secured by adding SSL certificates to the web server, then web visitors can browse a secured website which uses https instead of http address.

So what is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which is a dominated cryptographic protocol to secure internet communications. Basically SSL provides a secure channel between two network (either Internet or Intranet network) devices or computers.

Where can you get SSL certificates?

SSL certificates can be purchased at some well known certificate issuing companies or organizations called CA (Certificate Authority) such as Verisign, GlobalSign, or GeoTrust. SSL must be renewed at certain timeframe with a recurring fee, otherwise the browser will display “security certificate has expired” error message for such websites with expired SSL certificates, or show “Your connection is not private” message again.

How to get a free SSL certificate?

You might wanna ask if you can get a free free SSL certificate as a website owner. The answers is yes. You can get it from Let’s Encrypt, a free, open, automated CA.

Now major internet browsers support SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt.