What to do if you get a "Your connection is not private" error?
How to react to a security error message on your website
Last updated 08/07/2021
Objective
Several error messages may appear if your website is inaccessible. The examples below indicate that your web hosting plan does not contain any SSL certificate (if your website does not display one of the anomalies described in this guide, please refer to the "Go further" section):
| Browser | Error message concerned |
|---|---|
| Chrome: "Your connection is not private" |
 |
| Firefox: "Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead" |
 |
| Edge: "Your connection isn't private" |
 |
| Safari: "This Connection is Not Private" |
 |
Find out how to solve SSL-related error messages on your website.
OVHcloud provides services which you are responsible for with regard to their configuration and management. You are therefore responsible for ensuring they function correctly.
We have provided you with this guide in order to help you with common tasks. Nevertheless, we recommend contacting a specialist provider and/or the service’s software publisher if you encounter any difficulties. We will not be able to assist you ourselves. You can find more information in the "Go further" section of this guide.
Requirements
- control over your domain name’s servers and DNS zone
- access to the OVHcloud Control Panel
Instructions
To solve this issue, you will need to:
- determine the hosting plan to which your domain name is linked, in order to intervene on the correct server;
- create, activate or renew a SSL certificate for your domain name on the concerned hosting plan.
Step 1: check the hosting plan attached to your domain name
Check the hosting IP address
The error messages mentioned above do not necessarily mean that your website is hosted on one of our Web Cloud offers. For this reason, you will need to check the IP address of the server your domain name is attached to.
To find the IP address of your OVHcloud hosting plan, click on Web Cloud in the top of your OVHcloud Control Panel, then on Hosting plans.
In the General information tab, note the IPV4 and/or IPV6 address of your Web hosting.
Check the IP address in the DNS zone
You now need to check that the IP address listed in the DNS zone corresponds to the one of your Web Cloud hosting plan.
Click on Domain names of your OVHcloud Control Panel and select your website’s domain name.
Select the DNS Zone tab and note the target of the A record for your domain name:
Perform the necessary actions
| Scenario | What to do |
|---|---|
| The IP address listed in the DNS Zone corresponds to your web hosting plan’s IP address. | Proceed to Step 2. |
| The IP address listed in the zone does not concern any of the Web hosting plans within your OVHcloud account, but appears in the list of our Web Cloud servers. | Check that you do not have a hosting plan with this IP address within one of your other OVHcloud customer accounts, if you have several of them. Contact your webmaster or the OVHcloud partners for further information. |
| The IP address entered in the zone is not your hosting plan’s one, nor does it appear on the list of our Web Cloud servers. | Contact your webmaster or the OVHcloud partners for further informations. |
In the DNS Zone tab, a warning indicates that your domain name uses other DNS servers. These appear as "ns ? .ovh.net" or "dns ? .ovh.net" (replace the "?" with the relevant DNS server number): |
You must therefore modify your domain's DNS servers to match the NS records of the DNS zone. To perform this operation, follow the instructions of this guide. |
In the DNS Zone tab, a message indicates that your domain uses other DNS servers and these do not appear as "ns ? .ovh.net" or "dns ? .ovh.net" : |
Contact your webmaster or the OVHcloud partners for further informations. |
Your domain name does not appear in the Domain names section of your OVHcloud Control Panel.Or your domain's DNS Zone tab will appear as follows: |
It means that your domain name is not managed from your OVHcloud Control Panel. Check if it is not managed from one of your other OVHcloud customer accounts, if you have created more than one of them. You can also check the registrar of your domain name and its actual DNS servers with our WHOIS tool. If necessary, contact your webmaster or the OVHcloud partners about this. |
Step 2: check your hosting plan’s SSL certificate
In the General information tab of the concerned hosting plan within your OVHcloud Control Panel, check the SSL certificate section:
Scenario 1: your web hosting plan does not contain any SSL certificate
Activate an SSL certificate on your Web Hosting plan by following the instructions in this guide.
Scenario 2: the SSL certificate on your Web hosting plan does not work
If you generated a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, click on the Multisite tab and follow the instructions of this guide to activate and/or generate the SSL option.
If you ordered a SSL certificate of our partner SECTIGO, check if you have received an e-mail offering to renew it.
If necessary, contact the SECTIGO support team for more informations.
If you imported a SSL certificate from another provider, contact its support team.
To check all the e-mails sent by OVHcloud teams, click on the top right-hand corner of your OVHcloud Control Panel, then on Service emails:
Go further
Managing SSL certificates on a Web Hosting plan
Activating HTTPS on your website with an SSL certificate
Resolving a “Site not installed” error
Fixing the 500 Internal Server Error
Resolving the most common 1-click module errors
For specialized service providers (SEO, IT development, etc.), contact OVHcloud partners.
If you need assistance using and configuring your OVHcloud solutions, please refer to our support offers page.
Join our community of users on https://community.ovh.com/en/.
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