Browsers suddenly blocking my shop domain name for invalid certificate

[Maggie2]

My shopify store is called MagsRags, and my official url domain name  is MagsRags.net.

I check in to the public face of the shop nearly every day. This evening, I tried to enter magsrags.net and got: 

"Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue

Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.magsrags.net because this website requires a secure connection.

What can you do about it?

www.magsrags.net has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox can only connect to it securely. You can’t add an exception to visit this site.

The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website’s administrator about the problem."

Clicking on Advanced added this: "Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for www.magsrags.net. The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.myshopify.com, myshopify.com
Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN"

Now I understand why my visitor # went into the toi

I have screenshots if that would be helpful.

If I enter with url magsrags.myshopify.com, Firefox opens it without any problem, and ironically, changes the url to magsrags.net, the redirect.

I tried Edge and had a similar experience.

[Rick]

Hey @Maggie2 

Thanks for reaching out. I'd be happy to help you troubleshoot why your store domain is showing a security warning in web browsers.

I can confirm the same behavior on my end when I click your store URL that you linked above - on Google Chrome it says 'Your connection is not private'. This would usually indicate an issue with the SSL certificate, however we can work through this together to try figure this out.

Firstly, is this a Shopify bought domain, or a third party domain that you have connected to your store? If third party, who is the domain provider and also when did you connect it to the store?

In order to make sure your domain is set up correctly, I would recommend referring to our guide here which explains the process. It's important that the DNS settings for the domain are correct, otherwise you can sometimes run into issues such as these.

I had a quick look at the DNS settings for your domain, and as you can see here the A Record looks to be correct at 23.227.38.74 (which is a Shopify supported A Record). I also checked the CNAME setup and as you can see here, it is currently set to magsrags.myshopify.com which is technically incorrect. As per the guide I linked above, the www CNAME record should be set to shops.myshopify.com.  

I believe this CNAME discrepancy might be the cause of the problem here, as when you navigate to magsrags.net there are no security issues, but when navigating to the www subdomain of www.magsrags.net you get the aforementioned errors and warnings. 

To summarize, you should change the www CNAME record to shops.myshopify.com which I believe should fix this. Feel free to make that change and then report back with your findings. Bear in mind, as with any DNS changes on the internet, it can take up to 48 hours for the new settings to fully propagate. 

Looking forward to hearing back!

[Maggie2]

Hi Rick,

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

1. "is this a Shopify bought domain, or a third party domain that you have connected to your store? If third party, who is the domain provider and also when did you connect it to the store?"

Third party - GoDaddy, connected this spring (2022). I have not made any changes to it since, and it was working fine earlier this week.

2. "you should change the www CNAME record to shops.myshopify.com which I believe should fix this. "

Do I find that in the domain section of my settings? I intended to attach a jpg file here to illustrate, but "not supported".

And might this have anything to do with my google merchant center & analytics settings? I haven't made any recent changes there, but I know google is nudging everyone to migrate to their new setup before July 2023 IIRC.

[Rick]

Hi @Maggie2 

You are very welcome.

Thanks for confirming that your domain is a third party domain hosted by GoDaddy and was added several months ago. 

It is interesting to know you haven't made any changes at all which could explain this sudden change in behavior. I don't believe your Google Merchant Center or analytics settings would have any bearing on this, as it seems to be more so related to your domain.

As this is a third party domain that you have connected to Shopify, you will find the DNS settings on the GoDaddy host website. You will need to log in over there, and locate the section of your user admin area where you can edit the DNS settings for the magsrags.net domain. I found this guide on the GoDaddy website that explains how it can be done, however if you are unsure then I would recommend reaching out to GoDaddy support and requesting their assistance. You will need to edit the CNAME record name to be www and the value to be shops.myshopify.com.

If after changing this and waiting approximately 48 hours the issue is not resolved, then I would recommend reaching out to our own support team using this link here. We can take a closer look and see if there's anything else that might be amiss with the domain setup on your store.

[Maggie2]

Hi again. I finally had a chance to dig into this - I was intimidated by the idea of changing settings at Go Daddy on my own, but once I logged in, and then reviewed the information in the Shopify guide you linked to a couple of times, I understood what I needed to edit, found it, and made the recommended change. They said the update might take effect within an hour, and I am pleased to report that it appears to be fixed! www-magsrags-dot-net is no longer blocked.

Thank you!

[Maggie2]

Bad news. I have reverted back to being blocked on Firefox! It's the same security issue question "www.magsrags.net has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox can only connect to it securely." Microsoft Edge is not blocking my shop.

I just signed back in to godaddy to make sure the www was still set to shops.myshopify.com - it is.

What next?

[Rick]

Hi @Maggie2 

Thank you for reaching back out with those few updates. It looks like you believed your domain issue was resolved, only to have it revert back to the original error state. I am sorry to hear about that! 

I can confirm that when I try to navigate to the www.magsrags.net domain I also see the same error, and I cannot load your store unless I use the root domain of magsrags.net.

It sounds like you were able to login to your GoDaddy account and edit the CNAME for this domain - well done and thank you for doing this! It looks like this change was not enough to fix the issue and get the domain working properly. 

We will most likely need to take a closer look at your domain setup, which will require account access. I would recommend reaching out to our support team using this link here, so we can authenticate you on the store and take a look. 

I realize that this domain issue is most likely your primary concern at the moment, however have you thought about any plans for Black Friday/Cyber Monday? It's a huge sales weekend, and is right around the corner. This blog post contains a bunch of tips & tricks that you can have a read over, and if you don't utilize the information this year, you can have it ready for next year! 

[DANPERCNT]

Hi Rick, Im currently having the same issues with some customers not being able to access my store due to "the sites security certificate is not trusted" can you help please? 

www.percnt.com

[Kitana]

Hi @DANPERCNT, thanks for reaching out. 

I'm not getting any issues loading your website or seeing any security warnings. Can you explain more about what issues you're running into is and I'd be happy to help you do some troubleshooting steps. 

[DANPERCNT]

Hi Kitana,

Mine works perfectly fine too but had multiple customers send me screen shots of "the sites security certificate is not trusted"

Which is worrying

[Kitana]

Do you happen to have any of those screenshots your customers sent? If so can you please post it.
Also, can you tell me if you purchased your domain through Shopify or another hosting website? 

[DANPERCNT]

Hi I bought through GoDaddy and this is my third store ive set up and never ran into any issues connecting to shopify 

[Kitana]

Thank you for sharing that. 

It's interesting that both are experiencing this issue when coming from Instagram directly, which makes me wonder if it has anything to do with Meta. Are you using any types of link shortening tools for your Instagram bio link?

When the certificate is not trusted, it usually means one of the certificates has been installed incorrectly. Did you recently purchase this domain or recently had it pointed to Shopify?

I checked your DNS settings and your records are showing that they are pointed to Shopify and connected. Since that's fine, the next thing you'll want to do is contact GoDaddy support so they can check internally on their end that everything is correct. I would show them the screenshots you posted and explain that your A type record and CNAME record is pointing successfully to Shopify. They should be able to verify if everything is correct on their end. 

[DANPERCNT]

Currnetly working for customers on wifi but not 4G moible connection, any thoughts?

[Kitana]

I just saw your recent comment. This most likely is connected to the issue, this could be a network connection error. Do you know if those two customers are in the same area? 

[DANPERCNT]

They are all UK based, my partner just tried now on WIFI and seemed to work but she had no access at all on 4G which is the same for the others

[Kitana]

With domain issues it's hard to know exactly where the issue is coming from unless it's a straight forward one like your A record is pointed to the wrong address. That would be a simple fix, but with this you want to rule out all options until you narrow down what the issue is exactly. 

It looks like this is a location based error, but you should still contact GoDaddy just to rule out that there are any issues on their end. I tested your website on my laptop and phone, using Wifi and my data and I had no issues or warnings, but I'm located In Canada so the issue doesn't seem to be affecting me. 

After you speak with GoDaddy if there is no issue on their end I would contact your service provider to ask if there have been any outages or issues recently. 

[DANPERCNT]

Hi everything is fine on their end DNS wise and eveything okay on your end so its a really confusing problem for my customers who cat access on 4G connectivity 

[Kitana]

You can still contact our support team directly so they can check your backend to confirm everything is set up correctly. Since we are speaking over a public forum, I can't authenticate you here to take a look myself, but they would be happy to do so for you. Use the chat assistant and write "advisor", then follow the prompts to be added to our support queue. 

It's always good to get a firm confirmation.