AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

This page primarily refers to Netscape users.

Whenever you connect to any of our secure pages (i.e., any URL that starts with https:// instead of just http://), you may be asked to verify our SSL certificate. This happens because we sign our own SSL certificate instead of paying money to a commerical SSL certificate authority.

It works just fine, but Internet Explorer and Netscape will complain about not recognizing us as a valid Certificate Authority. Internet Explorer asks you a simple question---do you want to accept the certificate or not. Netscape, on the other hand, takes you through five dialog boxes before it lets you into the page. And worse, the default in Netscape is to ask you these questions every single time you access the page.

Well, its easy to tell Netscape to just accept our certificate already and get on with it. When you connect with Netscape to one of our secure pages, it will present you with a series of dialogs like these:

First Dialog

This dialog is Netscape's initial complaint that it doesn't recognize the authority who signed our certificate. Just click on Next when you see this dialog.

Second Dialog

This next dialog provides you with basic information about the certificate, in particular the fact that it's signed by us and is highest grade 128-bit security. Again, just click on the Next button.

Third Dialog

This is where you need to pay attention! Netscape asks how you want to handle this certificate. Make sure the final option box is checked, namely, that Netscape should accept our certificate until it expires. Doing this will insure you won't have to do this again till next year!

Once you've check the final forever option, click on Next.

Fourth Dialog

Make sure the Warn me option is turned off in this dialog and click Next.

Final Dialog

Finally, click Finish to bring this paranoid nightmare to an end!

And that's it!