Today I got a client asking me to set up an email on her computer, and she asked me a bunch of security questions that somehow seemed too advanced for a regular user like her, which let to the conclusion that she was being couched elsewhere.
One of the questions that she asked was:
"why is your server not secured?"
Wow, that is a strong afirmation, how could she be so secure?... So I replied:
"Not secured? What do you mean? How do you know?"
She told me: "well, the other tech guy told me that your server was not secure because you didin't have a proper SSL certificate installed, and this is giving me a bunch of warnings on Outlook and on Chrome".
That couldn't be more wrong and false, but to my surprise her computer in fact was giving her security warnings.
As I was trying to configure her email on Outlook I offered my client an alternative to check her emails using our webmail service, which obviously we have it secured with an SSL certificate and it always redirects the users to https by default, but her browser (Chrome) was always giving her the following error:
It turns out that she is using Windows XP and she has been having a lot of security issues, or mostly warnings given by the operating system, antivirus software and the browser.
What happens is that Windows XP is dead for Microsoft, they are not sending any more security updates or any updates at all as a matter of fact, by not having new updates many other software companies decided not to create updates as well for users on Windows XP. Chrome is one of them and starting April 2016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes.
We secure our sites using an SSL offered by a security proxy company called CloudFlare, very popular and used by millions around the world, I am guessing that the certificate that we have has a new protocol not installed in Chrome for Windows XP users, which leads to the error mentioned above. UNSUPPORTED PROTOCOL: This means that our protocol is newer than the version supported by the browser, therefore not compatible.
So for all those Windows XP lovers, it’s time to move on, you are heading towards an insecure digital world and no one can help you, Windows will not issue security updates and other software creators either. I suggest moving to Windows 10 ASAP.
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