Twitter and Facebook unavailable in Firefox

**btreloar** · 2012-06-27 14:41

Every week or so I' suddenly find that Twitter won't load. Firefox says "This Connection is Untrusted". If I then go to Facebook, I get a page that says Invalid URL and cites "Reference #9.d7260e6b.1340826042.6c965ef2 ".

Restarting Firefox doesn't help. Typically an hour or two later I will have no problems with either website.

What gives?

**btreloar** · 2012-06-27 14:48

In IE, I get a warning about Twitter that the name on the certificate doesn't match the name of the site. Why would that change? Or does this indicate Twitter's being hacked?

**Xircal** · 2012-06-29 10:55

Could be malware. I suggest you download the free version of Malwarebytes and then run a full system scan.

Here's the download link: http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

**gkellysr** · 2012-07-05 11:48

Make sure your computer's date and time are correct.

**bethel95** · 2012-07-14 19:28

I'm pretty sure that what's happened is that the security certificate set on your system has gotten old and not updated. I remember hearing/reading about this problem (and how to fix it) sometime in the past 6 months.

It may have been on one of Steve Gibson's "Security Now" podcasts; if so, he keeps full transcripts on his web site (www.grc.com), so you should be able to find the reference with a Google site search.

If that's not it, then Google the issue, limiting your search to the past year (to minimize the number of hits).

One way or the other, I think you'll find your solution.

**bethel95** · 2012-07-14 19:30

Originally Posted by gkellysr

Make sure your computer's date and time are correct.

And that's a good point, too--if your date/time are set into the future, Firefox may think that your certificates have expired when they really haven't.

**btreloar** · 2012-07-22 13:32

Well this is now even more absurd. Accessing Google on Firtefox 14 now reports "This Connection Is Untrusted". My date & time are fine. I'm malware-free. Little or nothing else running. Aarrgghh!

**btreloar** · 2012-09-22 13:55

I'm now using Firefox 15 and am seeing the same problem. At the moment, I'm getting blocekd from Pinterest, but can access Facebook and Twitter just fine. If I switch the rendering engine within Firefox to IE I see the same thing. But if I open the actual IE browser (on the same computer), I can get to Pinterest just fine.

Looks like a Firefox-specific problem, doesn't it? When this ends up blocking me from Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes Google, that hampers me substantially as I'm an SEO and need frequent access to all of those, though to Pinterest not quite as much.

FWIW, I've run a number of malware scans and verified my date & time are correct — all without any improvement.

Any other suggestions?

**btreloar** · 2012-09-28 11:20

Update - I just got blocked from Google in Firefox. Restarting Firefox in Safe Mode didn't help, so it must not be Firefox plugins.

Opening Internet Explorer doesn't help - I'm blocked there. too. So this must be a Windows problem, not a Firefox problem.

Disabling Norton 360 doesn't change anything, and I have no other virus or malware applications running.

Can it be my ISP or my router? I work on my laptop out of two offices, and this only seems (I think) to happen at one location.

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