Why did I get this scary error message?

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  clearsky66 · Member · Jun 27, 2014 at 12:45 am

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  When I clicked on the preview button to see how my blog looked, I got this message on a new tab:
  This is probably not the site you are looking for!
  You attempted to reach gretchenharro.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.wordpress.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of gretchenharro.com.
  You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.
  Proceed anyway Back to safety

  What should I do?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  diegoe · Member · Jun 27, 2014 at 1:58 am

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  Hi Gretchen.

  This is some times caused by a temporary confusion of your browser about something called SSL certificates.

  SSL certificates are like IDs for websites. They are issued by a central authority and guarantee that a certain site is the site you meant to visit, and not an impostor.

  This error is a reminder that you are trying to access a site through a secure connection (an SSL connection), but the site is handling you “papers” belonging to someone else.

  You can see this same problem with my WordPress.com blog:

  • https://diegoe.be/ <- Warning.
  • http://diegoe.be/ <- No warning.

  For one or other reason, your preview button is confusingly trying to load the site via “https” (meaning, SSL connection), instead of “http” (meaning a simple connection).

  There’s no reason to worry, what is happening is that you are trying to reach gretchenharro.com via a secure connection, the server with your content (WordPress.com) is identifying as WordPress.com, thus the confusion.

  You can ignore this message, and try to log out and log back in. If the message persists, there might be a problem with the Preview button sending you to the wrong link.

  Do you mind trying that?

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  clearsky66 · Member · Jun 27, 2014 at 2:50 am

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  I logged out and logged back in and got the same error message. I’ll log out and try again in the morning to see if it magically clears up, as these things sometimes do.

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  clearsky66 · Member · Jun 27, 2014 at 3:00 pm

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  I got the same message today. Suggestions? Should I just ignore it and live with not being able to preview blogs? I typed gretchenharro.com into a new tab and it went to the site without the error message.

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  diegoe · Member · Jun 27, 2014 at 8:08 pm

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  Hey Gretchen.

  I was just told that we had a bug in our Preview feature this week which was causing the wrong URL to be opened when clicking Preview.

  Can you try for one last time to log out, clear your browser cache, and log back in?

  Alternatively, can you try with a second browser like Safari or Firefox?

  Although the original bug has been solved, there’s always a chance that you are experiencing a further corner-case, which was not caught in the recent fix.

  Sorry for the inconvenience!

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  clearsky66 · Member · Jun 30, 2014 at 1:26 pm

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  Hi Diego,

  Thanks for continuing to follow-up with me!

  I was using Chrome. I cleared my cache (but not my history) and logged out of WordPress. I logged back in and got the same error message. Then I switched to Firefox and got their version of the scary message, “This connection is untrusted…”

  Knowing that it is a bug and not that I’ve been hacked is a relief.

  Thanks,

  Gretchen

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  clearsky66 · Member · Jun 30, 2014 at 8:59 pm

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  It’s working now!

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  diegoe · Member · Jul 1, 2014 at 4:22 am

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  Hey Gretchen.

  I’m glad this is fine now, feel free to message us anytime you have doubts about things like this. We are always happy to answer :-)).

  Happy blogging!