Partially unauthenticated content in Firefox

Ben Breakstone

When you load a secure page like a donation form using Firefox 3, you might see an icon of a padlock with an exclamation point or a slash through it at the bottom of the window.

If you hover your mouse over the icon, you'll see a message like "Warning: contains unauthenticated content."

The icon and message indicate the main HTML for the page is delivered securely via an HTTPS connection, but . If you see one of these indicators for a page of yours, you should correct it.

A common cause of the issue is graphics files. Firefox has a feature that can be useful in identifying such items.  Choose Tools > Page Info and then click the Media tab. A list of all the graphics files used in the current page and their URLs appears. Any URLs that begin with http: instead of https: need to be corrected. Please note this technique only addresses graphics files. You may also need to check for references to other types of files or incorrect links as described in the page linked above.