All about certificates

Hello friends,

I am trying to find more about certificates used by browsers to communicate with secure sites. For example in Firefox you can see a list of certification authorities some of which are Equifax, GeoTrust, RSA Security Inc. SECOM, Secure Trust, Swisscom, Thawte, Verisign and so on.

I have experienced that sometimes my anti-virus program warns me about the browser not having a certificate (when browsing in safety mode of course) and what puzzles me is why the browser doesn't suggest some action.

In Safari, once in a while information on a certificate is given in blue lettering in the search bar and it can be imported and installed. would like to see more light on this topic. Hope some of you members are familiar with this issue and have some helpful information.

Thanks.