The problem is as follows: In August I updated my SSL certificate for the BeerSmithRecipes.com site (as part of a server upgrade). This is something I'm required to do every year as the SSL certificate authorities only issue a certificate for one year, and basically any web site without an SSL certificate is now considered insecure and "suspicious".
The certificate was issued by Globalsign which is one of the oldest and most respected trusted certificate authorities.
Unfortunately both Windows and Mac systems that are no longer being updated are also not updating their trusted root certificate list. A trusted certificate list is a list in the operating system that tracks "certified" SSL certificate sources which is then used to verify all of the SSL certificates for the web. Companies like Globalsign have an entry on that list, but even their certificates have a limited lifetime (3 years I think).
So what is happening with Windows 7, Windows 8, as well as Mac 10.X or earlier is that Microsoft and Apple are no longer pushing updates of the trusted list to your computer, so the computer stops recognizing newer SSL certificates, even if they are valid.
The only workaround is to update the trusted certificate list on your computer. I have a fix for some older Macs (notably most of the 11 and 10.x OSX macs) which I posted elsewhere on the forum. For Windows 7/8 I posted some links a few posts back on things to try though I've not been able to verify them yet as I don't have an old computer at hand. If that fails, google "updating root SSL certificates" or something similar as there are posts online on updating the certificates, though the process
Find out more is not particularly simple.
