This site can't provide a secure connection
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rekrul last edited by
I have an old computer that still has XP on it. I know the first (and second and third...) thing I'm going to be told is that I need to upgrade or DOOM & GLOOM!!!
OK, can we please skip that part? This is what I have and right now I have very little money and upgrading isn't in my immediate future. I accept that it's not secure (is any version of Windows really secure?) and I'm willing to take the risk.
I downloaded Opera 36.0.2130.80 because it's one of the most up to date browsers that still runs on XP. I hate Chrome, so please don't suggest that I switch to that.
I also have an old version of Firefox and an Older version of Palemoon installed. Between them, I can visit pretty much any site I want, but there's one big problem; recpatcha no longer works on either of them. I click the box and nothing happens. Which is a problem as it seems that recaptcha is now the ONLY captcha that anyone is using. Sites used to use a variety of captchas, but now everyone is using recaptcha, even though it has a history of problems.
recpatcha does work in this version of Opera, but that doesn't help me much when I can't even open the site itself.
What sites? Well for one;
Trying to follow any download link to this site results in the error message that the site can't provide a secure connection.
I really don't care if the connection is secure or not as I'm not transferring any important information. I just want to be able to access the site.
Palemoon can open it just fine, but the recaptcha doesn't work. For that I need Opera, but Opera refuses to open the site.
Here's another one that Opera won't open;
How do I fix this?
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
So you're saying the site itself works, but not downloads? Not sure why they'd use one security protocol for the site and another for links ... but that would have to be what is happening.
As an aside, there are several versions of Linux that will run on XP=era hardware, if you wanted an up-to-date OS that will run on your hardware you do have options. Not that it'll run you favorite Windows software, but it could run a current browser.
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@rekrul said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
That just redirects to
http://nitroflare.com, which has no security. So, there shouldn't be any issues there. Not sure about the download links unless you have an example.@rekrul said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
Maybe that has to do with TLS 1.3 or something, which I don't think WinXP supports and Opera uses WinXP's network stack. Opera 36 doesn't give you an option on the error page to go to the site anyway?
Your best bet is to use the last version of Firefox ESR (52 I think) that's supported on WinXP as it has its own network stack. If that version doesn't work with recaptcha, perhaps it's just a user-agent issue and you can find an extension to mask as a newer version of Firefox for the sites that use it.
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burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
@burnout426 said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
Your best bet is to use the last version of Firefox ESR (52 I think) that's supported on WinXP as it has its own network stack. If that version doesn't work with recaptcha, perhaps it's just a user-agent issue and you can find an extension to mask as a newer version of Firefox for the sites that use it.
Firefox 52.9 ESR + this User Agent Switcher extension to mask as Firefox 63 for Windows might be the combo you need.
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rekrul last edited by rekrul
Sorry I haven't been back for a while...
Everyone seems to be misunderstanding the problem.
OLD version of Firefox: Nitroflare and CDRomance open and display perfectly. Attempting to download anything requires you to pass reCAPTCHA, which doesn't work in this version.
Pale Moon, last version for XP: Nitroflare and CDRomance open and display perfectly. Attempting to download anything requires you to pass reCAPTCHA, which doesn't work in this version.
Opera: Nitroflare and CDRomance will NOT open. All I get is the error message that the site can't provide a secure connection. Changing to "http" does not help. Opera will not let me access any part of these sites.
I am running into more and more sites that Opera refuses to open. In every case, Pale Moon and even my old version of Fire Fox display these sites just fine.
The problem is that these sites rely on reCAPTCHA which refuses to work on anything other than the latest web browsers. Changing the user agent doesn't work, as reCAPTCHA is doing something that older versions of Firefox and Pale Moon don't support.
Only Opera supports passing a reCAPTCHA challenge under XP, but that doesn't do me any good if Opera won't even open the site.
How is that an older version of Pale Moon and even a version of Firefox that's now considered ancient can open Nitroflare and CDRomance just fine, but Opera claims it can't?
It says it can't open a secure connection. Fine, I DO NOT CARE if the connection is secure. I just want it to open the site!
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blackbird71 last edited by blackbird71@rekrul There's something odd (and suspicious) going on with at least the Cdromance site. When walking through the process (using Opera 58.0.3135.65 under Win10) of exploring your downloading issue, clicking the download link for one of the "jewelry design" files as a test-case caused a porn-site pop-up/notification to suddenly appear instead. I report this both as a caution to anyone else visiting the site (in case there's something nefarious going on there), but also to indicate that whatever is going on may actually be interfering with the https handshaking related to the site (and any background Recaptcha activity).
On a related note, the Cdromance site's https certificate implies that a system has to be able to handle the TLS v1.2 128 bit AES GCM ([256, 2048] bit ECDHE_ECDSA/SHA-256) protocol to successfully connect (I used Opera 12.18 for that test to force the site to offer probably its lowest-available security protocol to better emulate your XP situation). I'm unsure whether XP is natively capable of supporting that ECDHE_ECDSA encryption algorithm, in which case it wouldn't be able to go any further. The Nitroflare site seems to require a login to test downloading, so I didn't go any further with that.
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rekrul last edited by
@blackbird71 All I know is that when I try to go to either site, all I get is this;
That's as far as I can get on any of these sites. They all work fine in an old Firefox and Pale Moon, other than the fact that reCAPTCHA doesn't work for downloads. At least I can browse the sites. For example;
With Opera, I am COMPLETELY locked out of the entire site.
Here's another site that Opera 36 refuses to open;
Something is definitely screwed up if old versions of Firefox can access these sites, presumably newer versions of Opera can access these sites, but Opera 36 can't.
If XP is the cause, how are Firefox and Pal Moon able to access these sites? What are they doing that Opera can't do?
I really don't care about security on these sites. I'm not entering any personal information on any of them. I just want to be able to access the sites. I installed Opera for the express purpose of being able to download from sites that use reCAPTCHA, but half the time I find that I can't even access the site because Opera is complaining about secure connections.
How do I tell Opera to forget about making a secure connection and just open the damn site?
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blackbird71 last edited by blackbird71
@rekrul In my evaluations, the https://nitroflare.com/ site is auto-redirected to the http version of the site page in IE, Edge, Vivaldi, Otter, Opera58, and Opera12 on this system. Clicking the login button of that http page brings up a "Secure connection"-badged https login site in IE, Edge, Vivaldi, Otter, Opera58, and Opera12 (but that page code does contain 1 http URL reference for its WebMoney button). Your Opera36 error message implies these redirections may be caused by the site server attempting to use an obsolete RC4 protocol, which causes auto-redirection in the browsers to the http site in all 6 browsers I tried, but which may not perform that auto-redirecting in the Opera36 version (or at least, in your installation of it).
The https://cdromance.com/ site makes a "Secure" connection in IE, Edge, Vivaldi, Otter, Opera58, and Opera12 (but Opera12 only displays the small center-top page header and nothing else, the probable result of a large number of CSS functions in the page code that are unrecognized by Opera12). I don't see any visible reCAPTCHA intercepts on this system when requesting a download, although the site occasionally does interject porn pop-up pages as I noted earlier when attempting a non-porn download. There's definitely some bait-and-switch attempts going on when selecting at least some of the site's downloads.
The https://newcomic.info/ site shows an "Insecure connection" badge in IE, Edge, Vivaldi, Otter, Opera58, and Opera12... which under examination is likely caused by the browsers trapping the https site page code trying to make callouts to two http URL addresses (which would thus involve unencrypted/insecure data transfer).
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rekrul last edited by
@rekrul Your Opera36 error message implies these redirections may be caused by the site server attempting to use an obsolete RC4 protocol, which causes auto-redirection in the browsers to the http site in all 6 browsers I tried, but which may not perform that auto-redirecting in the Opera36 version (or at least, in your installation of it).
I just nuked my installation of Opera and re-installed it. No change.
And can I just say that I REALLY appreciate the fact that Opera doesn't give you any options while installing, like where to install it to, what Start menu group to place it in, whether you want Opera to be your default browser and whether or not you want HTML files associated with it. /s
I don't see any visible reCAPTCHA intercepts on this system when requesting a download, although the site occasionally does interject porn pop-up pages as I noted earlier when attempting a non-porn download. There's definitely some bait-and-switch attempts going on when selecting at least some of the site's downloads.
Yes, it occasionally pops up ads for adult games. I guess that's the nature of such sites. To be honest I haven't checked it in a while and it appears that some of the downloads have direct links (which may cause a popup the first time they're clicked. Some of the downloads there do have reCAPTCHA challenges though. Back before reCPATCHA stopped working in the other browsers, pretty much everything on the site required it. If a download has a reCAPTCHA, it shows up as soon as you click the button to show the download links. For example, most of the PSP minis.
Yes, I know what you'll probably say about those, I'm just using it as an example.
The https://newcomic.info/ site shows an "Insecure connection" badge in IE, Edge, Vivaldi, Otter, Opera58, and Opera12... which under examination is likely caused by the browsers trapping the https site page code trying to make callouts to two http URL addresses (which would thus involve unencrypted/insecure data transfer).
I just want to know why my copy of Opera 36 seems to be the odd one out among all the browsers in that it's the only one that can't access these sites at all.
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nvmjustagirl last edited by
@rekrul make sure date & time is correct - turn n e firewalls or anti-virus off or if they scan ssl - try delete ' n your host file..
not sure how in Xp but in windows 8 or newer would be kinda like this..
go to - Control Panel - internet options - Content tab - click button called - (Clear SSL state)
have ya tried one of those web proxy sites.. that might help to get sum of your url in..
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blackbird71 last edited by
@rekrul said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
I just want to know why my copy of Opera 36 seems to be the odd one out among all the browsers in that it's the only one that can't access these sites at all.
If, in fact, there's something in the Opera36 design itself that inherently causes or contributes to the problem, somebody with that same version will have to come along here to confirm/deny your problem in their system. As it is, there's very little likelihood that such a cause (if it exists) is ever going to be fixed for such an old version that essentially hasn't been touched for 22 subsequent versions. You obviously well know the usual mantra about "old systems and obsolescence", so there's no point in belaboring that other than to observe that getting any design relief is going to be impacted by it.
Given that the 3 'problematic' sites you've noted thus far reflect 3 different behaviors from each other (redirects to http, secure-connection badging, and insecure-connection badging) on 6 different browsers/versions on my system but none of them replicating what you're seeing, it makes it difficult to discern a common cause behind what you're experiencing in Opera36. Finding repeatability/commonality is always the golden key to troubleshooting a problem's cause.
Effectively creating a connection and maintaining full functionality with a secure website involves a chain of events that each has to occur in a correct and timely way, and requires the system and/or browser to contain and support everything from the correct (and unrevoked) site certificate to the correct encryption protocols to the correct (and matching) html and JavaScript coding protocols and functionalities. Anything that is in the data path must also not interfere with these processes, including the OS, antimalware programs, browser settings, browser extensions, firewall, modem, DNS lookup cycles, the user's ISP, and national censorship filtering (if any). Add to this mix, the fact that servers and websites are often mis-coded in various ways in attempts to "be creative", and it can create a nightmare to unravel the cause(s) unless the problem can be replicated on other systems and then picked apart by intelligent trial and error.
If the problem cause lies within a particular installation flaw/corruption of Opera36, the path to remedy usually involves separately (and in order) trying to: halt any extensions, clear cookie/history/cache/session data and files, uninstall any extensions, reset the user profile, reinstall the program over top, reinstall the program to a new/different location.
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rekrul last edited by
I haven't been back for a while because I easily get discouraged when problems seem to have no solution.
@nvmjustagirl said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
@rekrul make sure date & time is correct - turn n e firewalls or anti-virus off or if they scan ssl - try delete ' n your host file..
Done all that and as expected, there was no change.
not sure how in Xp but in windows 8 or newer would be kinda like this..
go to - Control Panel - internet options - Content tab - click button called - (Clear SSL state)
I don't see any such option.
have ya tried one of those web proxy sites.. that might help to get sum of your url in..
The problem with web proxy sites is that none of them work with any kind of captcha. It doesn't matter what options you set in the proxy, or how compatible the proxy site claims to be, I have never found one that works with captchas. I may be able to view the main site with a proxy, but when it comes time to pass the captcha, which is the only reason I'm using Opera in the first place, it fails.
Using an actual proxy server might work, but ones that are open to the public are rarer than unicorns. Oh sure, you can find lists of hundreds of supposedly open proxy servers, but none of them work. Either the connection just sits there trying to connect or you get a message that you're not allowed to connect to it.
@blackbird71 said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
@rekrul said in This site can't provide a secure connection:
You obviously well know the usual mantra about "old systems and obsolescence"
Yes, it goes right along with "change for change's sake". Websites have an obsession with updating to only work with the latest browsers even if there's no valid reason to do so.
Case in point: I sometimes look at Tumblr blogs where they post images every day. I always use the archive view which shows the posts in a grid. Recently that stopped working for both my versions of Firefox and Pale Moon. It's not a security issue, they just no longer display the page. It still works in Opera, although using Opera to view the archive page is pain in the ass. The archive page doesn't do anything now that it didn't do before. It's exactly the same. I contacted Tumblr to find out why and got the standard BS answer telling me to update my browser. When I asked for an actual technical explanation of exactly what feature of newer browsers was deemed so important that they needed to break compatibility with older ones, they never bothered to reply.
Which means that they made some change to the code that broke the page on old browsers, despite the page looking and behaving exactly the same as before, but they can't or won't explain why they did it. My guess is that they made some inconsequential change that doesn't actually require a newer browser, but whatever editor they used just automatically wrote the code in such a ay that it breaks older browsers. Just like Microsoft's latest Visual C compilers produce code that won't run on XP, even if the program is something simple that doesn't actually use any features of Win7/8/10.
Not to mention the sudden push to make Google's reCAPTCHA the one and only captcha used on the entire net. There are sites that used to use other, more browser friendly captchas, but they've all switched to reCAPTCHA. Even though the reCAPTCHA forums are full of complaints that it often doesn't work correctly. Back when it still worked in Pale Moon and it would make me click the various images in the display, I'd always have to do it 5-6 times because no matter how carefully I chose the images, it would always show me several more.
Given that the 3 'problematic' sites you've noted thus far
Here's another one;
Anything that is in the data path must also not interfere with these processes, including the OS, antimalware programs, browser settings, browser extensions, firewall, modem, DNS lookup cycles, the user's ISP, and national censorship filtering (if any). Add to this mix, the fact that
Based on the fact that both Firefox and Pale Moon can display these sites, I'd say that rules out most external causes. If the problem was caused by the OS, antivirus, firewall, modem, DNS, ISP or national censorship (I'm in the U.S. so there's not supposed to be any censorship), it should affect all browsers not just Opera.
As for Opera's settings, I doubt that's the problem because Opera 36 basically doesn't have any important that you can change. Even with the "advanced" settings enabled, Opera is still like a bicycle with welded-on training wheels. And at the time of my posting, I didn't have any extensions installed. I've installed a couple simple ones now, but nothing that should affect website loading.
servers and websites are often mis-coded in various ways in attempts to "be creative", and it can create a
I noticed that Opera won't offer to save my password on any site that seems in any way to be non-standard. Like this one.
If the problem cause lies within a particular installation flaw/corruption of Opera36, the path to remedy usually involves separately (and in order) trying to: halt any extensions, clear cookie/history/cache/session data and files, uninstall any extensions, reset the user profile, reinstall the program over top, reinstall the program to a new/different location.
I've tried wiping the installation and re-installing it. I had no extensions installed and all the settings were pretty much at their default.
To be honest, I'm not particularly fond of Opera. Beyond the connection issue, I can't even change such basic settings as turning off smooth scrolling. I had to install an extension just to change the color of visited links without overriding all the colors on a site. When I open more than about 15 tabs on a Tumblr site, each new tab seems to take longer than the last to finish loading and until it does, Opera is off in limbo. Even previously loaded tabs go blank while the new tab is loading, although not the main page that I'm on for some reason. If I dare to open 20 or so tabs, all the tabs to the same Tumblr site "crash" and all previously loaded pages get replaced with a message that the page has crashed and button to reload it. How does a web page "crash"???
For reference, when Tumblr still worked with my old version of Firefox, I could open 100+ tabs without incident or browser slowdown.
Plus, usually when I close a tab, it jumps to the next tab to the right, but sometimes (I can't figure out why) it jumps to the tab on the left. Most of the time it opens new tabs on the far right, but sometimes, seemingly at random, it will open tabs in the middle of other tabs. There's no option to view a raw image in the same tab without copying the image location and pasting it into the location bar. On the Tumblr archive pages, I can't even find any way to view/save the image that's right in front of me. I can see it on the page, but Opera thinks it doesn't exist. Why would I want to do that? Occasionally I click on an image in the archive page and the page associated with it has ben been deleted. I think "I'll just grab the smaller version from the archive page and do a reverse Google image search." but I can't find any way to do that. Even saving the "complete" archive page doesn't save the images. ARGH!!!
Also, I'd just like to add that I hate having to type my message in this tiny little box and having a "preview" window that looks almost identical to the editor window pretty much negates the entire purpose of having a preview.
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blackbird71 last edited by blackbird71
@rekrul As I noted earlier, you're trying to use an Opera version that's outdated by 22 subsequent versions, installed under a system OS that has had no mainstream maker 'feature' support for 9 years and no security support for 5 years. Many technical things, especially online things, change at a rapid pace and for reasons that are often complex and inter-related: security discoveries/development, hardware evolution, software design practices/mechanisms, trends in dominant user-preferences, etc. While some of the technological change may indeed only be "for change's sake", much of it comes from those far more foundational reasons. As time goes by, fewer and fewer companies and individuals have reason to remain conversant with obsolete program details and limitations, let alone expend their resources trying to provide user support in increasingly rare situations.
Different software developers employ differing technologies and architectures for seemingly similar products (eg: browsers), and certain of those technologies may be more robust in supporting some technological changes while perhaps suffering greater impairment in other change areas when compared with similar products, particularly once they move into obsolescence. Some makers may even choose to support their products over much longer time-frames than others, but for reasons that matter to them. Hence, whether browser A works the same way as browser B on an aging system facing the latest web environment usually involve myriad factors that make it increasingly difficult to find someone with the intimate knowledge to help unravel them.
Over the years, I've 'flown' a number of computer systems deeply "into the ground" via aging/obsolescence. The path for each has always unfolded precisely along the lines of what you're experiencing: similar software on such a system start behaving differently from one another, certain functionality abruptly becomes sporadic - especially in online environments, maker support evaporates, compatible ancillary software and tools become unavailable, knowledgeable similar users disappear, questions increasingly remain unanswered, and unresolved problems accumulate. To the extent that one can live with the growing limitations and problems, they can continue using such a system online; but the point is eventually reached where the cumulative frustrations, limitations, and security risks simply can no longer be ignored. At that point, the system has to be taken offline for its remaining lifespan (which might actually be quite long if the computer is mainly being used as a tool for computation, etc). Only the individual user himself can make such a determination, but they do need to understand and accept the swelling costs of continuing in growing obsolescence.
