Server identity and connection errors on Apple devices

A bit of iPad and iPhone internet weirdness..,

Hi, a while back I had noticed in our router’s control panel that a couple of our devices were connecting to a website (solarunitedneighbors.org) frequently and even when we were not using the devices. This was a website I used to visit and participate in when I was looking into getting solar panels for my home in 2017. Come to find out I cannot get panels without major roof structure updates - that has unfortunately determined that I will not be proceeding further on that path. I still had the website bookmarked in safari until I noticed the frequent connections last year and began to troubleshoot. The first thing I could think to do was to block the site on our DNS provider NextDNS. That worked… sort of? Ever since then for at least 6 to 8 months when I pick up either my phone or tablet the first thing usually I see is a message “Cannot Verify Server Identity. The identity of ‘www.solarunitedneighbors.org’ cannot be verified.” If I click on details I am taken to the stock “Blocked by NextDNS, contact your administrator to unblock this website.” page which tells me the block I setup is working. But why are my devices trying to connect in the first place?

The next thing I thought of shortly after discovering this was that maybe Safari connects to all your bookmarks for some sort of reason like prefetching or something. Even though that seems totally excessive to me, I took a look and found the bookmark and removed it. So at this point it has been several moths later and I am still scratching my head on this one.

So this only happens on my 2 devices. But at some point around the time of discovery another anomaly began to happen only this happens on my devices and also my son’s phone and tablet and also our Mac mini. When we are using a browser it happens quite frequently that the page will go completely dark and we are interrupted with another message that reads “This connection is not private. This website may be impersonating ‘whateverwebsitewemightbeusing.com’ to steal your personal or financial information.” And 2 buttons Reload and Visit Insecure, both of which refresh the page which can be exceptionally annoying, especially when you are in the middle of filling out a form, or most of the way down a really long page which refresh will start you over at the top.

Anyone been down a similar road and can provide some helpful insight would be a lifesaver (or at least a sanity-saver lol). It knows I’m taking about it so I will end here for now…..