I can vist httpS Biden website just fine, but if I go to loomer2022.** I first get warned the website is not secure, then I have to go through several steps which are designed to be confusing and difficult to navigate through, before I am "allowed" to visit the website I wanted.
Who determines which websites are "safe" ? Is it Apple or are they hooked into an external database somewhere?
[Link Edited by Moderator]
Post the text of the error message, please. If it’s the message I think it is, the message is warning that you may not be connecting to the intended website; to the website that you want to connect to.
Which means either you’re connecting to a fraudulent website intercepting your traffic, or that the particular site you’re connecting to is presenting itself inconsistently. Inconsistent connection data during the secure connection can be from a fraudulent site intercepting your traffic. Or can be from a misconfigured website.
Put differently, you’re being warned the site you have connected to may not be the website you wanted to connect to.
If the site you connecting to is not fraudulent, then the website maintainers will need to reconfigure their DNS domain and/or the host name and/or the connection security certificates that they are using. They’ll need to look a little less like a fraudulent site; less like a host that is intercepting web traffic.
Inform the website maintainers that they’ve set up their web server security incorrectly, and suggest they look into it.
If by “big tech interference”, you mean some folks who have misconfigured their web server connection security (what probably happened), or that you’re potentially connecting to a website that you didn’t intend to (actual fraudulent connection), yes.
While unlikely, it’s also possible that some few websites might deliberately misconfigure their own website security settings, to intentionally provide the appearance of a conspiracy against them. The particular motivation for a misconfiguration being far more difficult to assess remotely, of course. But this case seems unlikely.
Avoid fraud by using encrypted websites in Safari on Mac - Apple Support
A previous reply here references Google Safe Browsing, which is a different matter.
Post the text of the error message, please. If it’s the message I think it is, the message is warning that you may not be connecting to the intended website; to the website that you want to connect to.
Which means either you’re connecting to a fraudulent website intercepting your traffic, or that the particular site you’re connecting to is presenting itself inconsistently. Inconsistent connection data during the secure connection can be from a fraudulent site intercepting your traffic. Or can be from a misconfigured website.
Put differently, you’re being warned the site you have connected to may not be the website you wanted to connect to.
If the site you connecting to is not fraudulent, then the website maintainers will need to reconfigure their DNS domain and/or the host name and/or the connection security certificates that they are using. They’ll need to look a little less like a fraudulent site; less like a host that is intercepting web traffic.
Inform the website maintainers that they’ve set up their web server security incorrectly, and suggest they look into it.
If by “big tech interference”, you mean some folks who have misconfigured their web server connection security (what probably happened), or that you’re potentially connecting to a website that you didn’t intend to (actual fraudulent connection), yes.
While unlikely, it’s also possible that some few websites might deliberately misconfigure their own website security settings, to intentionally provide the appearance of a conspiracy against them. The particular motivation for a misconfiguration being far more difficult to assess remotely, of course. But this case seems unlikely.
Avoid fraud by using encrypted websites in Safari on Mac - Apple Support
A previous reply here references Google Safe Browsing, which is a different matter.
Fraudulent websites can be interposed within a connection path and seeking to intercept traffic, and fraudulent websites can be the destination of a secure connection. From what can be ascertained during the secure network connection, a website interposing itself for whatever reason little different from a misconfigured website.
A fraudulent website can have a digital certificate and can display that padlock icon within a web browser. That’s commonplace, now.
Digital certificates protect the network traffic, including whether the connection is likely to have reached the intended server.
Digital certificates aren’t a reliable means of classifying the integrity of the web server and its contents, nor whether the web server might use insecure storage for your login credentials or other configuration or operational issues for instance, nor that the web server you’ve connected to is even the one that you intended to connect to—this the difference between what you meant to have entered into the address bar, rather than what was actually entered, and the difference between the web link that was intended or perceived rather than the web link actually clicked.
Services such as Google Safe Browsing and content filtering use additional means to identify the activity on the target website, whether the website was intentionally constructed and operated to be fraudulent or otherwise malicious, or the website became malicious due to a server breach, or other issues with the website, or whether and how the content offered by the website might be considered by those customers that the particular filtering is marketed to.
Does interception happen? Yes. Some organizations deliberately set up connection interception services on their own networks, and for various reasons. I’ve also used these connection-interception services to troubleshoot secure connections, as have many others. And there are malicious uses.
Any “padlock means safe” perception is... simplistic. Quite possibly overly simplistic. If not outright wrong.
The web site administrators for the website misconfiguring the web server connection security is a far simpler, more mundane, and more likely explanation.
This if this was an HTTPS / SSL / TLS connection error, as I suspect arose here.
Again, providing the actual error messages involved matters.
So to answer your question (for connection errors associated with a misconfigured digital certificate, misconfigured DNS, or misconfigured server host name), that would centrally be the web site administrator here, and knowledge of the design of HTTPS / SSL / TLS connection security used by various web browsers’ secure IP network connections to connect securely to web sites.
Ticking that Safari preferences setting for Safe Browsing is not relent to Safari reporting HTTPS / SSL / TLS configuration errors detected.
Safari will report HTTPS / SSL / TLS connection errors detected, as will other apps using secure network connections, irrespective of that Safe Browsing setting.
Neither the use of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search engine nor the use of the DDG Safari extension is relevant to Sfari detection lf HTTPS / SSL / TLS web server configuration errors.
The Safari padlock icon only appears after a secure connection is established, and the DNS, host name, time, and digital certificate private key have all been evaluated by the secure network connection framework.
Tools are widely available to web server administrators to scan their own web servers for common configuration errors, and also to ascertain the level of security provided to web server visitors. That this connection error was resolved certainly implies that the web server configuration issue was detected and reported and resolved.
You’re seemingly confusing the Google Safe Browsing warning with a rather more mundane secure connection error—details of and text of the messages involved does matter. There’s more than one use of fraudulent within the technical vernacular.
About "Fraudulent Website warning"
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210675
https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/avoid-fraud-by-using-encrypted-websites-sfri40697/mac
It may be conservative website administrators cannot configure their website security while democrat admins are much better at it and Google is no longer interferring in the US elections. We certainly can't rule it out. You may be right.
Perhaps there's no reason to be skeptical about Google.
But it probably isn't just this one admin causing it across conservative websites.
Joe Biden's admin apparently knows how to configure their security. I don't visit left wing websites often, or much more than once, but that's all it takes for the warning to go off. Curiously I have previously visited the loomer2022 website with no problems, and that just makes it even more weird to me.
I don't mean to be too particular about just one website and blow it out of proportions, but this is happening to me, not often, but sometimes. I just wanted to know if this was Apple or ... Google as it turns out.
I'll once again point out my Safari preferences was ticked to not show these warnings, which is really puzzling. I can't imagine how Google could override Safari preferences and show a Safari warning? I can understand them tracking us despite promising Apple not to because it's happening on their end, but this is a Safari warning?
Anyways. I've been reminded about this "Google Safe Browsing" which I had actually forgotten existed, and gotten my question answered.
Thanks.
Your Safari preferences settings are not relevant to an HTTPS / SSL / TLS connection error, nor to a web server configuration error.
Google Safe Browsing is also not relevant to an HTTPS / SSL / TLS connection error, nor to a web server configuration error.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) add some complexity to these configurations, as additional web servers and additional cached web server data is involved within the configuration.
Locally-installed add-on “security” apps and “privacy” apps can also intercept web server traffic, further complicating troubleshooting.
As for the transient nature of this case, I’d suspect the website administrator resolved the HTTPS / SSL / TLS error; either by reconfiguring DNS for the web server, or by reconfiguring the server host name, or by replacing a problematic digital certificate being presented by the web server with a corrected digital certificate. Or you hit a different caching server within the CDN, or the problematic caching server or servers were reloaded with or reconfigured with corrected data.
The message was not secure, as mentioned a few times above. It was not a warning about authenticity.
Apple caught google tracking Mac users when they promised not to so. We don't want to be paranoid, but there's no pride in being naive either.
Of course it's a possibility that conservative websites just can't figure out how to configure their site security, no one can rule it out. It's a remarkable coincidence though, but certainly a more comfortable explanation than Goole once again misusing their power. Then again, how hard is it for them to get away with it if the public prefers to explain away valid concerns pointing to more misconduct from Google.
Again, I'm not sure how this "may not be secure" warning showed up with Safari preferences specifically set up to not show me this message (because convective websites may have a problem configuring site security). The ability to override my Safari settings I don't understand.
This was seemingly a website administrator’s web server configuration mistake.
This is an old article, but describes the usual bad-server-configuration trigger:
The warning (which is no longer appearing when I revisit the site now that I have told Safari I still want to visit the site) said "may not be secure" or something to that effect. What does it say when you visit the site? I have seen that other warning about a site possibly not being the authentic site, in the past on other sites. But this was a not secure warning, and the padlock is showing + https, if that matters.
"BigTech" means the big tech companies. Commonly used term. The question is if this fraud warning has become a political tool by either Apple or other parties.
If there is an "inconsistency" in the connection, shouldn't the warning be "try again later" instead of "this site is dangerous stay away forever" (?).
If a political candidate wanted to stage a false flag to play the victim card i.e. Jussie Smollett, scaring visitors away from their site would not be the way to do it. Faking a violent attack or deliberately trying to get banned from social media would be another way to to go, but the website is where you would want people to go to get the "true story" afterwards. So this being staged seems unlikely.
What makes it even more odd, is that in my frustration over having this experience again, I went to Safari preferences and I actually have the fraudulent warning turned OFF because it seems to have a political opinion about which sites I should visit. So why this message still turned up is even more frustrating.
My question was "who determines which sites are safe", so I'm trying to find out who is really warning me about visiting the website in question. I've heard about Google Safe Browsing and it would make perfect sense if they are the ones behind the warning (they have been caught numerous times interfering in US elections), but since the warning was not ticked in Safari preferences, how the heck ... ? Is this another situation where Google promises Apple they won't track Mac users if they ask them not to, and then Apple finds out they are doing it anyway?
That may be what this admin did, I don't have your insight or expertise, but how this happens predominantly on conservative website is concerning.
Obviously Safari isn't causing any error, but Safari is showing the error dialogue, or not, depending on preferences.
Now, you mention plugins and that got me thinking. I do have duckduck installed in Safari. If this is causing problems, I still don't understand how Safari will show me a "Safari warning" with warnings are deselected. Apparently I have no way to avoid these warnings, even when conservative website admins can't configure properly.
We probably won't solve the mystery, but I wanted to raise a 'red flag' (no pun intended).
I guess a "fraudulent website" can have a "secure connection"? That's confusing. I thought the reason for the fraudulent website warning was exactly that, an insecure connection being hijacked by third party and thus being a "fraudulent website" ?
You're probably be right about the reason why the error suddenly appeared and then went away again.
Is "Fraudulent website" warning in Safari, BigTech Election interference?
