@skewnerd said in Opera 12.02 initially fails to connect to server but will later--security prefs not enabled?? help:
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I'm just wondering if there is a workaround to getting websites to load still on Opera 12.02 without having to upgrade.
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It depends on the website server. When you go to an https site, there is a negotiation back and forth between that site's server and your system to determine just what connection protocol and related encryption choice will be used for the visit. If the site indicates a required range of protocols and sets of encryption choices none of which are available with the browser, the connection will fail and you'll get a failure notification. The website sets the rules on what kind of connection choices it requires to be used, and the browser simply tells the server what's available on the browser in the user's system. Some websites will allow the negotiation to descend even to include old or deprecated encryption schemes, but that's not considered good security practice - particularly if significant personally-identifying data is involved at any point in accessing or using the site. As time goes by, fewer and fewer sites will allow the old deprecated connection schemes, and the ones that do should always be treated very carefully in terms of what personal or account data you expose while connected. There are good reasons old connection protocols and encryption schemes get deprecated - and they all involve insecurity issues.
One of the key problems with old OS's and their browsers is that they become truly obsolete in certain areas with the passage of time. A result is more and more limitation in what they can do (or safely do) online in a technologically evolving online universe. In a similar way, more and more limitations come to exist in what software versions are compatible with the aging OS. You're running into both these issues.