I friend who reads here but doesn’t post send me some answers.

Here is what he sez:

RE: '' “Revocation information for the security certificate for this site is not available. Do you want to proceed? Y-N-View Certificate” What the fuck is “Revocation information” and how do I get it available? They’ll have to answer that for sure. What happens if you “View Certificate”? ''

Security Certificates are ''stamps of approval'' used by commerce websites to help reduce consumer concerns and provide a way of policing the online transaction biz.

The Cert is not kept by the commerce site (in this case CCBill) but by a third-party company which audits practices and procedures.

The problem here is that CCBill is either ''asking'' for the cert incorrectly, or has chosen to use a company whose servers can't respond quickly enough for their volume of traffic.


The actual path is something like this:

Join Page --> CCBill

CCBill tells the user's browser ''Check my Cert @ http://www...''

(It's either being done wrong, or the other site doesn't answer.)

The user's browser then pops that dialog up as a way of ensuring security - just in case the cert *has* been revoked.

The page *will* load behind the message, but it's confusing and frightening for users who have only average knowledge of how the web works.

CCBill's cert goes through http://www.thawte.ca - a Canadian company that was purchased by Verisign.


That's probably the issue - too many redirects getting to the database containing the cert info.


CCBill should probably investigate and possible change their setup so that it hits a Verisign server in the US instead of way up north.