Free SSL no good anymore??

[Davek0974]

I have ben using the SSL service offered free by my hosts for some time. Today i got an email saying that self-signed certificates were no good and i need to fix it.

Now, in past experience - when google says something like this, what they really mean is "We will dramatically drop your site ranking until you obey"

Anyone else get the warning??

 

[arnydnxluk]

Free SSL certificates issued by the likes of Let's Encrypt and Comodo are not equal to self-signed certificates, the latter won't be trusted by visitor's web browsers and therefore result in warnings. The website in your signature has a valid certificate from Let's Encrypt.

What exactly did the warning from Google say? Has it referenced a specific domain you're using which only has a self-signed cert? If it's a generic message (i.e. not relating to a specific domain of yours), then you can ignore it assuming all of your domains are secured with certificates issued by Let's Encrypt.

 

[Alan]

Today i got an email saying that self-signed certificates were no good and i need to fix it.

Email from whom, exactly?

As mentioned, your site isn't using a self sign cert.

 

[Davek0974]

Here we go, the email address appears genuine, just checked in my cPanel SSL page and all seems valid, current and set for auto-renewal. Very odd.

 

[Davek0974]

Email from whom, exactly?

As mentioned, your site isn't using a self sign cert.

Address is "[email protected]"

 

[arnydnxluk]

It's possible the email is based on out of date information, perhaps from a previous crawl. I did notice your certificate was only issued on the 4th of January, although this could be a coincidence if your certificate happened to have been renewed on the 4th. In any case you can ignore Google's email - the domain is now using a trusted certificate.

 

[Davek0974]

Thanks, thats reassuring

 

[karmacomputing]

Right now, your domain (ddmetalproducts.co.uk) is signed by Let's Encrypt on 4th January 2018 , expires on 4th April 2018.

If you'd like to, and you're using Google Chrome you can see this information yourself by opening Developer Tools (Ctrl+Shift+i) or Menu->More Tools->Developer tools, then click the 'security' tab to view your current certificate.

Why 4th April 2018? This is because Let's Encrypt issues 90 day certificate lifespans, this is a conscious decision to promote automation and reduce risk (see "Pros and cons of 90-day certificate lifetimes" thread on their forum).

So who's automating your certificate?
krystal.co.uk looks to be your webhost, and they are probably automating this for you. So kudos you don't really need to worry!

Note @simonswords.9902 has created a tool to monitor expiration of your urls so you can get reminders

 

[Bruce.D]

Let's Encrypt singed SSL should be OK, if you have setup correctly. But have to renew it every several months by setting up auto-renew scripts.

 

[Andrew_P]

Self-signed certificates are no good. That's true. But there are free solutions which are not self-signed and they work perfectly. As already mentions, letsencrypt.org is one of them.

 

[neckozenica]

hi,

Google's proposal to remove trust in all existing Symantec SSL certificates is bad for the entire SSL industry, no matter what side you're on.

 

[webhostuk]

Good news is Letsencrypt now offers Wildcard SSL , for more details you can refer : https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-and-wildcard-certificate-support-is-live/55579

 

[Karimbo]

A couple of my shared hosting providers have implemented https.

Seems to be working fine. I remmeber it was a right PITA to pay for a dedicated IP and then a certificate to get https working before.

So it's puzzling how the web hosts are suddenly able to give you all that for free. One shared hosting provider charged £50 p.a for a dedicated IP on top of anything you already paid.

Just curious if anyone else has experienced a SERP boost after implementing HTTPS

 

[arnydnxluk]

So it's puzzling how the web hosts are suddenly able to give you all that for free. One shared hosting provider charged £50 p.a for a dedicated IP on top of anything you already paid.

• SNI - removes the need for a dedicated IP address.
• Let's Encrypt - completely free and automated certificate authority.

= No costs to pass onto customers