Sometimes I am on a secure site and there is a caution sign in the URL window. Upon refreshing, the connection is secure once more. Why might this be happening?
Fairly often as of late, when I am on a very popular website like outlook.com or youtube.com, although the URL is 'https', I see a yellow caution sign in the URL field. Once I refresh, I see the green lock again.
I am also unable to upload an image to this form
And I'm not getting a confirmation email on the last email address I tried to use
So it's unlikely anyone will even see this
All Replies (2)
Hi, you got here.
This will be caused by emails which embed content (like an image) that is loaded through a http-connection. the grey lock with the yellow warning still means that the data you view and enter on the site is secure and directly coming from outlook. firefox might be more proactive warning you about this issue than other browsers - so switching might only make you FEEL more secure.
you can also set up firefox to block the loading of http-elements like images on an otherwise encrypted https-site - then the green lock should always stay in place on your mail: enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named security.mixed_content.block_display_content. double-click it and change its value to true.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mixed-content-blocking-firefox
You can check the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer) for error messages about mixed content.
You can use "Ctrl+F5" or "Ctrl+Shift+R" to reload the page and bypass the cache to generate a fresh log.
While the icon indicates "mixed" content -- most likely images retrieved via HTTP instead of HTTPS -- it is not necessarily best to block them unless the site handles highly sensitive information.
Commentary: It's a fact of life that sites featuring user-generated content such as email messages on your webmail site and posts on your favorite forums often trigger a mixed content warning. And when you can see the culprit, you can be reasonably comfortable about what's going on.
As you discovered, the warning icon can be surprisingly persistent. For example, you left the email message and returned to your inbox, or you've changed videos. The issue is that some sites do not navigate to a new page, such as newer email sites and YouTube. Instead, they just cycle content in and out of the page. Once Firefox has detected mixed content in a page, it will not remove that warning icon until a new page is loaded (or the page is reloaded) because the mixed content detection does not track content being cycled out of a page.
Sorry! I don't know if that will be improved in the future, or whether it is even possible to be certain that the page is now fully secure without assessing it from scratch again.