Warning: If You Own Your Own Website

[morgandawn]

Heads up to anyone who has their own website. Most of us have low-cost websites that are on shared servers. As you may know, Google and some  browsers are now forcing us to access websites using SSL (secured sockets layer) certificates. This secures the information being transmitted between you and the webpage. If you've ever looked at the upper left  in your browser address bar  and seen a little green sign or a lock symbol  along with "HTTPS://www...."   next to a website address, then you are accessing a website securely.

 

But if someone visits your website and their browser is set to warn against "unsecured" websites,  they will get a malicious website warning. Most fans won't proceed. But the few who do so may face yet another surprise.

 

If your visitor uses HTTPS or if they push  past the malicious website warning, they are often  redirected to someone else's website. Once that other website is in their browser cache, every single time they try to go to your website again they will be permanently redirected until they clear their cache.*

 

The reason this is happening is that many web hosts are too cheap to set up their servers properly or are using older servers. If you have a website on a shared server, and you have not paid a fee to move to a dedicated server or buy your own dedicated IP address and then paid a second fee to buy  your own security certificate, your website will be redirected to the first person on that server  who happens to have bought  a security certificate. The servers  will search alphabetically down the list  of hosted websites until they find someone with a SSL certificate and ...voila that is where you will now go.

 

For example, if your website is on a server with somebody who own website  www.aaa.com and they own  a security certificate, every single website on that server that does not have their own separate security certificate, will be redirected to www.aaa.com

 

Some web-hosts  know that Google is pushing every website and browser to use HTTPS which in turn means every website will need a security certificate. Good web-hosts are now offering free security certificates on accounts that use shared servers. Ex:  Dreamhost and LunarPages.  Bad ones, like Bluehost and Hostgator will not offer them. Or they will force you to pay 2-3x amount and upgrade to a Business Enterprise service plan. Even worse, they won't tell you it is necessary and instead leave you and your visitors to find out that your webpage is being redirected to some dude's page that starts with the Letter A. So check with your Internet host to see if they offer a  "free SSL certificate on a shared server". And move to another web-host.
 

*Note: Firefox users: Clearing the cache may not work. You might have to delete the browser history.

Comments

[auronlu]

Thank you so much, I have had the same webhost since 2002, and sure enough, their control panel had an SSL/HTTPS section to activate free encryption which I'd never investigated. Toggle, done,

[sylvaine]

Ugh! Thank you for the heads-up.