Certificates

[Jeff Neufer]

Every time I open Outlook 2007 to check my mail- I receive an Internet
Security Warning that states: that the server I am connected to is using a
security certificate that can't be verified. Unless i click "yes" to
continue to use the server, i can't receive my email msgs. help! (also
states that the Target principal name is incorrect)

 

[Roady [MVP]]

The main return question is; is the server indeed using a non-verified
security certificate?
Contact your mail admin or ISP to find out.

On your side;
Make sure you have the latest root-certificates installed on your system. If
you are running Windows XP, there was an update for it a few years ago. If
you don't have updated that then you cannot trust any certificates that are
coming from that root either.

 

[Jeff Neufer]

Thank you for your reply Roady.

I use AOL's server and do so free...therefore, there is no support offered.
I sometimes wonder whether this whole certificate thing isn't a ploy to get
people to start paying for their service again.

I re-formatted and obviously reloaded WinXP not that long ago and have done
all of the SPs, patches etc. I would have thought that root certificates and
so forth would hav e come along with all of those updates Windows seems to do
about every other day!

 

[Roady [MVP]]

No, this is an optional update. You have to use the Custom button when
visiting the Windows Update site to see this particular update.

all of those updates Windows seems to do about every other day!

Neih, they are scheduled to come only once a month for quite some time now.
Only in very specific cases will they release an update in between; that
hasn't happened too often yet. After you have reinstalled your computer you
must indeed run Windows Update a couple of times to get all the updates ;-)

 

[Nobody]

I use AOL's server and do so free...therefore, there is no support offered.
I sometimes wonder whether this whole certificate thing isn't a ploy to get
people to start paying for their service again.

I have just managed to get this going.

There are a few problems.

I don't think MS distribute the required intermediate certificate that is in
the chain between the AOL server certificate and the master. You can get it
from https://pki-info.aol.com/AOLMSPKI/index.html (Brian Tillman has given
this as a solution for other users in the past.)

You can also get the root of the chain from AOL if needed.

That may or may not fix it.

If you are on the main AOL system and are using IMAP it may work, but if you
use POP or are on one of the non-mainstream connections it will probably
still fail. The certificate contains a list of Subject Alternative Name
entries. These are other DNS names that are valid for the same server (e.g.
pop.aol.com, pop.csi.com). Outlook should use them but it will not unless you
install a hotfix that is still under test. So this comes with a Microsoft
warning on the page.. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968858/en-us

However, it fixed it for me!

Eric

 

[BoneEsq]

How did you finally solve this problem?