Question

I got a link-sharing website hosted on linux, which allows users to share links. I purchased a digital certificate SSL 123 to host it in a secure https mode. But the problem is it won’t reflect in the address bar as a normal https connection, it displays https with an error:

Your connection is encrypted with 128bit encryption…However, this page includes other resources which are not secure.

I enquired with my hosting company, but they say that because of my website, which allows people to share links, The ‘THWATE’ company can’t verify the other links which have been shared in my website, that is why, it is displaying an error. I am confused as to whether continue with SSL or just host it normally, as I don’t want my users to feel insecure about their info.

Answer 1

No the links are not checked but everything you embed in the page is. For example images, scripts that are linked using HTTP. The browser will need to download the linked scripts, images, … and complains that these were retrieved using http.

This is no problem:

<a href="http://example.org/">Some link</a>

but these are (EDITED):

<img src="http://example.org/picture.png"/>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

Download the scripts using HTTPS