Individuals (including DePaul faculty, staff and students) are experiencing an error message when they try to access certain DePaul sites like outlook.depaul.edu or d2l.depaul.edu, and potentially websites outside of DePaul. This error may occur whether you are using a PC, Mac, iPhone or Android phone. This is a version of the error screen as displayed in the Google Chrome browser:
Please note the error "NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID" indicating a certificate error.
What do should you do if this error screen appears?
In the vast majority of cases, this error appears because your Operating System (OS) hasn't been updated to a recent version. The error appears because an old TLS root certificate used by DePaul’s certificate vendor expired. That expired certificate was replaced with a newer one in all modern versions of the major desktop and mobile OSes, so updating your OS will provide the new certificate.
For PCs/Windows-based laptops: Please see the Windows Update FAQ and Information Page. It's also important to make sure you have all of the latest Windows Security updates (Instructions for Windows 10).
For Macs/Apple-based computers: Macs must be running macOS version 10.12 or higher in order to avoid this error message. Instructions for software and OS updates are on this page. Please note that IS recommends running macOS 10.13 or higher, as macOS 10.12 and older no longer receive security updates from Apple.
For iPhones: iPhones and iPads must be running iOS version 10 or higher in order to avoid this error message. Instructions for iOS updates are on this page.
For Android Phones: Instructions to update Android phones to latest version.
Are they any workarounds?
You may use Firefox to work around this error, as it uses a different root certificate store than the one used by Google Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari, and other browsers (which use the OS root certificate store). However, we strongly recommend updating to a current and supported OS version as soon as possible, because you are putting yourself at risk for a variety of security issues. Note the Firefox workaround will work for both Windows and Mac computers, but may not on mobile devices.
Note: Regularly installing operating system and security updates will not only stop you from seeing the unfortunate "Your connection is not private" error message when going to sites like d2l.depaul.edu or outlook.depaul.edu, but will also protect you and your data in a variety of other important ways.
As always, please reach out to the Help Desk if these fixes do not work for you.