iTunes can’t verify the identity of the server

@Freedom4u2:

amigo, this looks like very sound advice, however none of my certificates have blue circles with plus' on them.

do you have any other suggestions before I got to the mac shop and lay down the Law :-) ?

many thanks in advance, this is driving me insane!

Same issues...had problem for over two weeks cannot connect to iTunes store...Does anyone have any ideas?

Same problem here. It took me hours to find this solution that worked perfectly:

1. Close iTunes and the App Store
2. In Finder go to Applications, Utilities and open Keychain Access
3. Click on "System Roots" under "Keychains"
4. Click on "Certificates" under "Category"
5. For every certificate listed that shows a little blue dot with a plus sign do the following:
   1. Open it up by double-clicking on it.
   2. Click on the triangle next to "Trust"
   3. In "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) choose " no value specified"
   4. Close the certificate (you will most likely have to enter your admin password)
   5. Open the certificate again
   6. In "When using this certificate:" choose "Use System Defaults"
   7. Close the certificate (you will most likely have to enter your admin password)
   8. The blue dot with the plus sign should disappear.
6. When no certificates show this blue dot anymore, close the Keychain Access.
7. Open up iTunes or the App Store. The connection should work now.

Hope this helps.

Awesome......worked like a charm! Can't thank you enough, this problem was a pain in the neck.

My pleasure! It really wasn't easy to find these instructions. A lot of people seem to have this problem. I am sure that Apple Care helped some of them. But why doesn't Apple post this solution??? Glad it worked for you, too! 🙂

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!! Had tried everything including reinstalling OS which worked up until installed all updates and started having same issue. This fixed the issue and now iTunes is working like a charm!

My niece just bought the iPod touch 5th generation and we are having the same issue and want to follow your instructions. I apologize in advance for this stupid question: in number 2, what does "Finder" mean? I'm trying to get to "finder" on my PC so I can follow the rest of your instructions. Thanks much!

Thanks a lot for this solution. The problem started at my computer when I had to put in a new harddisk (old one made problems and became too small). After I had reconstrocuted my old environment from a clone, problems started, but could be fixed by the way described by you.

So, your fix is to bypass the built-in security, trust unknown certificates, and open yourself up to malicious files? 😮

@Imation

The problem occured right after an update through the App Store. So if the official update from Apple caused this, I don't really think there is a risk. There are other threads about this problem. I've tried all the other suggestions (checking the date setting, reinstalling iTunes, deleting certain files, etc.) and none of these worked. AppleCare couldn't help other than suggesting try to reinstall the whole system and then transfer all the files and change the settings manually. Well, my solution works and no one has reported back any negative results. But if you have a better solution, please post it hear. We are all eager to read it.

Thanks! Freedom4u2s - this fixed my app store problem! Other threads were sayin to re-install mavericks(!) and to do all sorts of dodgy commands in terminal, but this did the trick! Many thanks!

i can't understand this part : In Finder go to Applications, Utilities and open Keychain Access

is this available in windows XP?

Sorry, j@sp3rtyuiop, but this solution is for Macs.