hi MarkTe, most likely this will be due to your security software on the affected system - please refer to our article on the subject: How to troubleshoot security error codes on secure websites

That was the first place I went, but it doesn't solve my problem. Using Internet Explorer, I found a message board that is talking about this string after google ?gws_rd=ssl

if the article didn't help then we'd need more information on your individual circumstances like shown on the screenshot: click on advanced on that error page [1], then on the blue error code [2] and finally copy the text to the clipboard [3] and then pasting that here into a reply in the forum.

thank you!

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl

Peer’s Certificate issuer is not recognized.

HTTP Strict Transport Security: true HTTP Public Key Pinning: true

Certificate chain:

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I did try to change my homepage back to https://www.google.com but the extra string still comes up

thanks. so it appears that a traffic monitoring system used in this educational network environment is intercepting the secure connections by using a certificate that is unknown and therefore untrusted by firefox.

you could try if the following steps can address the issue: enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up). right-click somewhere on the page to create a new boolean preference - name it security.enterprise_roots.enabled and set its value to false. then restart firefox.

otherwise if this didn't help either you should get in contact with your it department about how to best resolve that...

I'll try that with our district's IT dept. then. I figured it was a Firefox issue since Internet Explorer works and all goes through the same district network. Thanks.

that boolean string worked! Thank you.

thanks for the feedback - that string basically makes firefox look in the system's/IE's trust store for the missing certificate to authenticate the connection...

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask one more question since you seemed to know. Is there an advantage to using the https://encrypted.google.com address over the typical google.

i had to look that up myself. it appears that using https://encrypted.google.com would have slight privacy benefits if you clicked on google ads next to the search results (as your search terms wouldn't be transmitted to advertisers over http): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/google-encrypts-more-searches

overall that is a pretty small difference though and if you don't click on ads anyway i'd say you're just as well off with the regular https://www.google.com site...

Thank you.