| Issue: | Customers are receiving SSL Certificate Warnings in their email clients. |
|---|---|
| Status: | Our System Administrators recently renewed our Shared SSL’s on several servers. |
| Who is impacted? | Users connecting to email over SSL without defining the specific shared hostname within their mail clients, for example, secure147.inmotionhosting.com. |
| Estimated time until resolution: | This SSL warning is related to the renewal of the Shared SSL certificate for several severs, and is not an ongoing issue. |
You will receive an SSL warning, if you were trying to connect over SSL to the mail server and you are using your domain name as the server address, such as mail.example.com
Instead, if you’d like to connect to the mail server securely, you should use the Shared SSL of your server to connect. This would look like secure147.inmotionhosting.com
If you use the server’s shared SSL hostname in your mail client, anytime we renew the SSL certificate on the server-side, you won’t then need to go back accept the SSL exception again in your mail client.
2014.04.14 11:34am EST
- If you are getting a warning in Outlook, you can accept the certificate, but you may get prompted again when “Outlook performs an AutoDiscover operation.” Microsoft provides a possible work-around here (see method 4). But you would have to edit the registry, and we cannot be held responsible if these modifications have adverse affects on your computer.
Sorry for the inconvenience this SSL warning may have caused, and thank you for your understanding!
So, I have been using IMH shared SSL for email for a very long time. This hosting account is for debug so I dont use it much, but I need it now. I am using PHPMailer (just updated). This is the debug log:
2017-01-13 15:03:45Connection: opening to ssl://secure204.inmotionhosting.com:465, timeout=300, options=array ( ) 2017-01-13 15:03:45Connection: Failed to connect to server. Error number 2. "Error notice: stream_socket_client(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14090086:SSL routines:ssl3_get_server_certificate:certificate verify failed 2017-01-13 15:03:45Connection: Failed to connect to server. Error number 2. "Error notice: stream_socket_client(): Failed to enable crypto 2017-01-13 15:03:45Connection: Failed to connect to server. Error number 2. "Error notice: stream_socket_client(): unable to connect to ssl://secure204.inmotionhosting.com:465 (Unknown error) 2017-01-13 15:03:45SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: (0) 2017-01-13 15:03:45SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting
Password has been validated and is correct.
Any clue why this is now not working after your update? I will tell you that although we are using IMH Shared SSL for email, we did have you install a 3rd party SSL so our URL Path would match our domain.
I accepted it last time, but it’s asking again. Now what?
Hello Bill,
If you are being prompted to accept the SSL certificate again, then this probably means that the certificate was updated on the server-side. We did just recently re-generate our server’s SSL certificates due to the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug that took place on Monday April 7th 2014 .
You should be safe now to go ahead and accept the new SSL certificate.
Please let us know if you had any other questions at all.
– Jacob
I’m not getting any sort of errors when going to myHostname.com/webmail, and I am able to SEND e-mail from my [email protected] account, but it seems that I am unable to receive e-mail at any of my e-mails on my domain. This SSL certificate error should affect receiving e-mail, should it?
Any suggestions as to why this just started?
Hello jchauncey,
Thank you for your question. If you are connecting to webmail using myHostname.com/webmail, the shared SSL update should not affect you.
If you are using an email client such as Outlook, Macmail, or Thunderbird, you will have to accept the updated certificate. Also, here is a helpful guide on how to troubleshoot an email program, when you can send but not receive.
We are happy to help but will need more specific information, such as your domain name.
Shared SSL’s are renewed yearly, and should have only affected email for up to 24 hours, depending on your settings.
If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,
-John-Paul
How do I know which number is mine for the shared SSL? I know my login is correct but I can’t get my client set up.
Thanks,
-Barry
This is based on your server hostname. To find it, you may log into cPanel, then look to the left side details bar in which you will see something like bizXXX.inmotionhosting.com or ecbizXXX.inmotionhosting.com.
That worked! Thanks!
Hello again Shannon,
Awesome! Glad that did the trick, no problem at all!
– Jacob
I’m using Mac Mail and my outgoing mail won’t send. I’m unclear as to what I’m supposed to change. My server is “mail.example.com”. I tried replacing it with secure147.inmotionhosting.com
but that didn’t work. I’m not super technical with email…so I may need to be walked through this step by step.
Hello Shannon, and thanks for your comment.
Sorry for the confusions about the mail server settings, the secure147.inmotionhosting.com is just an example of what your Shared SSL address would look like.
In your specific case, you’d actually want to utilize secure28.inmotionhosting.com as both your incoming and outgoing mail server.
We do have a guide on setting up Mac Mail that might help you further.
If you’re still having issues, you can always attempt to login to webmail in your web-browser with the email account you’re trying to setup in Mac Mail to confirm that you also have the correct credentials to access the account.
If you’re still having problems connecting please let us know what version of Mac Mail you’re running, and if it is giving you any specific errors back.
– Jacob
I made this change several weeks ago but I still get logon errors like:
“The server for account Phoenixinsights returned the error Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.” Your username/password or security settings may be incorrect. Would you like to try reentering your password?”
I am using Outlook 2011 on Mac. A day later, it does seem to download my messages. Why am i getting this persistent error?
thanks,
Mike
If it intermittently works, then stops working, then working again, it sounds as if Outlook is either occasionally sending incorrect information to the server, or it is incorrectly interpreting information from the server, which can be caused by any number of things within Outlook itself. I recommend removing and re-creating the email account to further investigate the issue.
I cannot find any information on my “shared SSL” server name. I’ve been unable to find this in the AMP or the cpanel. However, maybe this isn’t even necessary – the “Estimated time until resolution” heading above implies that this is a temporary problem. If so, will this work itself out? When? Thanks.
The shared SSL URL will be similar to your normal temp URL. Instead of biz at the beginning of it, replace it with secure. For example, if your Temp URL is https://biz91.inmotionhosting.com/~userna5, change it to https://secure91.inmotionhosting.com/~userna5.
I am in Minnesota and have gotten the invalid certificate warning in Mac Mail. The certificate issuer is Comodo CA Limited in Saliford, Greater Manchester, GB. Seems like a long way to go for a Inmotionhosting server. Is this a safe server or not?
When dealing with SSL certificates, the geographical location of the server or the certificate authority that issued the certificate doesn’t matter.
The mail server is in fact safe, but because we updated the Shared SSL certificate from the server-side, a mail client would see this change in SSL certificates and issue a warning about the change.
As this guide describes, it’s safe to go ahead accept the new SSL certificate so that your mail client stops warning you of this change.
– Jacob