[DaRose]

Hi
I am not sure if this should be posted in another forum or not but I will try here & you can point me in another direction if I'm wrong.
A friend has contacted me for help & in her email she tells me that she is getting the following message while trying to access most (maybe all) websites on one of her computers (Win XP):

There is a problem with this website's security Certificate.(In Blue)

The security Certificate presented by this website has expired or is not yet valid.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attemp to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website. (This is bold)

Click here to close this webpage

Continue to this website (not recommended)

She also told me that her hotmail account was recently hacked. I asked how she knew this & she said she couldn't get in there anymore.
She said that she got an email from hotmail after this & they asked for her secret question and what the last 2 or 3 emails she had sent were or who they were sent to & she couldn't answer the questions so she had to open a new account. I told her that as far as I know hotmail does not send those kinds of emails & not to give out any information.
I don't think the hotmail has anything to do with the security errors she is getting now as she is not having any problems with her laptop that she uses regularly to access her email accounts.
What do you all think? Any suggestions on what to do with her desktop to solve the security error issue?

Thanks again for the assistance.

[JudyC]

Tell her to make sure her computer is set to the correct date, year and time zone and her computer's clock is showing the correct time. That usually clears up certificates errors.

It's entirely possible that Hotmail contacted her IF she contacted them first for help logging in to her account. If this was just some random email that appeared and she fell for it, then she'll have to contact Hotmail to take ownership of her account. See this article: http://www.community...d-products-r147
Scroll down to Microsoft>Windows Live Solutions and read on how to get forum based help for Hotmail.

The biggest favor you could do to help her is educate her on how to avoid phishing scams if this is what happened. A web based email account crack is usually no biggie unless she had emails stored with scads of personal information about her in them. If she did, she needs to go about securing her bank and credit card accounts and cancel/change passwords on all sites she has used to conduct financial transactions. If this isn't what happened, a tutorial on the importance of a secure password, nonsense answers to security questions and changing passwords on a regular basis might help her avoid this in the future.

[DaRose]

Thanks, Judy.
I'll try the time check first.
I thought I already had taught her in all the ways of avoiding phishing & other scams but I haven't been directly involved with her or her comp issues on quite a while & i think she forgot what I taught her.
It is possible that the email was from hotmail, because she said she was blocked from getting into her account but if she got the email after that, which she says she did, she had to get it in another account....I would think. I will get more details from her on this.

Thanks, as always, for the quick response.

[JudyC]

You're welcome.