April 18, 2019

Blank webpages from an insecure URL

My preferred Internet browser is Chrome. Sometimes when I try to go to a webpage, I find myself with a blank page. The URL is correct, but the page just doesn’t load anything. After much investigation, and much head scratching in bemusement, I have found that pages that don’t load are being flagged by Chrome as insecure. To protect me, Chrome is not loading the page.

It might not be a malicious page. The first time I noticed this was with the book distributor’s website that I use almost daily to order books for my library. It could be that their webpage  isn’t as up to date with their security protocols as Google wants it to be. I am so tech-y that I can understand, but I have finally found a workaround.

The workaround is to change the beginning of the URL from http:// to https://.  Adding that s, turns the http to secure http and Chrome allows access.

Here is a screencast.