how to access a site that keeps sending an error message
I need to access the official site for the water institute in the country of Panama and keep receiving the following message Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to www.idaan.gob.pa. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR Error code: PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
I could access it until about 1.5 years ago when I used it a lot. Now I cannot access it anymore but this is an official governmental site www.idaan.gob.pa so why cannot it accessed now? I cannot access if from any of my devices, including those with the most up to date windows and Apple versions.
What do I need to do? contacting the institution is out of question as the site works OK in that country, so it is a FireFox problem outside of the country. Please help. Thanks, Helena
All Replies (6)
Hi Helena, I used one of those sites that checks whether a site is down, and it said that the site is down for everyone, not just me.
How do you know that it works correctly inside Panama?
A page that looks like their official Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/p/Idaan-Panamá-100064330771023/) lists the following email address, if you want to inform them of the problem: idaanpanama@gmail.com
Hi, Thanks for the message. I got a message last Sunday from a friend in Panama with a link to check something I need to get from that institution and when I tried to access that link this message started to pop-up. On Monday she told me that the site was working when I told her that I was not able to access the link. It kept poping-up whenever I try to access the site.
I do not know if the site is down now - thanks for the information. i will ask my friend to try to access it from within the country and see what she tells me.
Thanks for the email - it may help though sometimes official institutions do not really answer emails (rarely in Latin America at least). What worries me is that the message I get from Firefox mentions an authenticity issue, not that the site is down. I guess (wrongly maybe) that the site may not meet the safety requirements for Firefox?? But this is a government site, so safety should not be an issue (I guess again).
Thanks again Helena
Hi Helena, the technical code PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR means that either the server, or a router/firewall between Firefox and the server, or some security software responded to Firefox's connection attempt with a RST code -- an instruction to immediately stop trying to connect.
It's possible that if you haven't been able to access this site for over a year that foreign access is blocked. Do you have a VPN program? There probably are some VPN programs with servers in Panama, but I don't know whether any free ones have a server there, you might need to sign up for one that has a free trial, or if you need to use this site frequently, one that has a low price. A lot of YouTubers share discount codes for VPN services. As an example: https://www.piavpn.com/Trae
Thanks.
I asked my friends in Panama and the site is running fine there, but a friend in Portugal to whom I asked could not enter and got the same message that I got in Japan, so i doubt it is related to not using it for some time.
I have the impression that the new versions of the internet most commonly used browsers are complicating the access to many sites for whatever reason not always related to safety. Interesting that other government sites can be accessed without problems (i.e. the garbage recollection department, the civil registry, the tax registry, etc).
Can you please explain a more about the VPN - what is it and what it does. Would I be able to access this site in Panama if I use one?
VPN as one can search for what it does and doesn't do. So unless your friend can contact someone on that site to fix the login issues that isn't something for Firefox to fix.
A VPN is a service that allows you to connect through an intermediary server, either in your country or another country. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that if you select a server in Panama, it will fool the website into thinking you are a local user.
As for whether this is a browser problem, a RST cannot be ignored: the destination server (or a device between Firefox and the server) is terminating the attempted connection.