Chrome marks access to the site as "Not Secure" on both geneanet.org and en.geneanet.org

[lm4phantom]

This started a few days ago and has become progressively worse.

Running Chrome, no ad blocker active and by now, my access is reduced to text only. No GUI and the site is not workable for practical purposes.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. I'm technology savvy and have reset computer, cleared history a few times, etc etc, the basics. Somehow my set-up is not interpreting the security certificate but the most annoying thing is "text access only".

For an example, see attachment ... not even possible to insert it into the body of this message ...

Thanks in advance,

Rudi Blondia

[ericdubois]

I'm able to access the site correctly on any browser with no security warning. It may have been a temporary issue with a CDN. Can you try another browser to confirm that the problem is limited to Chrome?

Eric

[lm4phantom]

Thanks Eric for the feedback.

I can confirm that it is the same result for Safari on this computer.

It starts out by saying that the "security certificate is not signed by a trusted authority" and I should abort. When I continue, I end up with a text-only interface. Safari or Chrome doesn't seem to make a difference.

I've just tried to get access at my neighbor's house on a Windows 10 laptop and there were no issues. So, the fact that I'm accessing the site from California doesn't seem to make a difference.

Possibly a change in security certificate interpretation ... my OS is up-to-date and this all started 2 days ago. At first I got the security warning but after continuing, I still ended up with a GUI and a workable site.

Will move my system nextdoors tomorrow and try again to exclude provider (Comcast) and see if it moves with the computer.

Thanks again,

Rudi

[ericdubois]

I'm also on a Mac in the US. Tested fine with Safari 14.0.2, Chrome 91.0.4472.114, Edge 91.0.864.48, Brave 91.0.4472 and Firefox 89.0.1.

As an additional test, can you create another user account on your Mac and see if that makes a difference?

Eric

[lm4phantom]

Thanks Eric,

Turned out to be tied to the version of MacOS.

Working on a 2010 Mac Pro tower with El Capitan and for one of other reason, things started going wrong few days back. (I'm almost every day on-site.). Have confirmed this with my 17" Macbook Pro, equally running El Capitan, the site runs on text only while Chrome indicates the certificate is not secure.

My wife's MacBook on Catalina has no issues with the site and my office PC's on Windows 7 and 10 do just fine.

This may remain a mystery, but I do have a workaround solution.

Thanks again !

Rudi

[ericdubois]

I have't used Catalina in a while. Try opening KeyChain Access, go to Category > Certificates and search for "USERTrust" (that's the certificate authority Geneanet uses).
- First try to delete the certificate (right-click > Delete) and restart. A fresh copy of the certificate should load next time you visit the site.
- If that doesn't solve the problem, try changing the certificate trust setting in KeyChain Access > Certificate Assistant.

Eric

[lm4phantom]

Followed all the suggestions from above and the conclusion is that no matter what I clear, flush, reset, profile I use, the certificate or the site doesn't like my older macs with older operating system. I have a Mac Pro 2010 and an iMac 2010 that run El Capitan and they both have the same problem.

I use the Mac Pro uniquely for genealogy.

I "upgraded" the Mac Pro to High Sierra and all problems went immediately away. Geneanet is running without security notices on the certificate and I'm back to a GUI interface.

My wife's 2020 macbook on Catalina runs without a glitch and my sisters iMac 2019 on Big Sur (in belgium has as suspected no issues.

Just an unlucky aging combination, no worries, it was bound to happen at some point.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

[ericdubois]

I found people with similar problems who solved it by switching to Firefox.

My 2010 Mac Pro runs smoothly on Mojave (after GPU upgrade). It could go to Catalina, but I still need some 32-bit apps.

Eric

[lm4phantom]

Thanks Eric,

I may follow your lead for the Mac Pro upgrade to Mojave’ ... any suggestion for GPU that works ?

These machines are not ready to retire ... hahaha

Rudi

[ericdubois]

I have the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8 GB, which is one that Apple recommends. Only drawback it it doesn't show the boot screen. It was $180 when I bought it but a quick search shows them selling for much more now. So check with recommendations on a Mac forum.

I replaced the processors with 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon a few years back and boot from a NVMe SSD. Still plenty of power for my need.

Eric