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Help Docs Security Overview SSL Certificates Guide Troubleshooting: Your Connection Is Not Private/Secure/Trusted

Troubleshooting: Your Connection Is Not Private/Secure/Trusted

Seeing a privacy error for cPanel, WHM, or Plesk? Your server is likely using a self-signed SSL certificate, which browsers don't automatically trust.
Security Server Management Troubleshooting Website Management
3 min read

Problem

When trying to access cPanel, WHM, Plesk, or webmail, your browser says your connection is not secure/private/trusted. This error message depends on what browser you are using.

This is happening because your server has a self-signed SSL certificate. SSL certificates keep your information secure by using encryption keys to encode and decode the information you send and receive over the internet. If your server has a self-signed certificate, your browser will probably give you a warning when you try to log into cPanel, WHM, Plesk, or webmail.

Chrome

chrome security warning

Firefox

firefox security warning

Safari

safari security warning

Solution

Both cPanel and Plesk use secure connections on their control panels through self-signed certificates. Self-signed certificates don’t necessarily mean that your web traffic is insecure. Self-signed certificates work exactly like a certificate purchased through an SSL certificate authority, except that they are signed by your server; not a certificate authority. That is the only difference. The encrypted connection using a self-signed certificate is as secure as any other SSL connection.

So if your connection is just as secure, why does your browser take you to a warning page? Your browser assumes certificate-authority-signed certificates are more trustworthy than self-signed certificates. When you’re accessing your server, you know exactly what IP address you’re accessing. So, you can disregard these warnings. If this warning pops up when you were logging into your bank account, you should be more worried: big organizations and financial institutions should always have certificates signed by a certificate authority.

There are two ways to prevent these errors:

Create a Security Exception

Again, these warnings are usually nothing to worry about. The easiest way to make this go away is to accept the self-signed certificate. If you do this, you might have to accept this certificate again if you use a different computer or browser.

Chrome

  1. At the bottom of the error information, click on Advanced.
  2. Click Proceed to 192.0.2.0 (unsafe). You should see your server’s IP address listed.

Mozilla Firefox

  1. At the bottom of the error information, click on Advanced.
  2. Click Add Exception… to accept the self-signed certificate.

Safari

  1. In Safari, the certificate warning is a popup box. Simply click Continue to accept the certificate.

Install a Service SSL

If there are many different people connecting to cPanel accounts or webmail on your server, it might not be practical to tell every person about self-signed SSLs. If these people are your customers, seeing this warning might worry them, even if there’s nothing wrong. You can prevent this by installing a service SSL on your server.

A service SSL is slightly different from a regular SSL. While a regular SSL encrypts traffic on a domain, a service SSL encrypts traffic for certain services you use, including cPanel, WHM, and your email server. If you decide to install a service SSL, you can follow our walkthroughs: Installing a Service SSL in cPanel.

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