What the heck does this mean?

[Jeannie]

I wanted to go to Hotmail to check my email. The following message popped up in a little window:

You have attempted to establish a connection with lc4.law5.hotmail.passport.com. However, the security certificate [Glossary Entry] presented belongs to the web site lc1.law13.hotmail.passport.com. It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this web site.

If you suspect the certificate shown below does not belong to lc1.law13.hotmail.passport.com, please cancel the connection and notify the site administrator.

So, what does that mean?

[evilbeth]

Unfortunately, I don’t know but I’ve also been getting security certificate notifications on hotmail all day.

[Commander_Fortune]

Hey. Me too. but not if I type in the address, only if I try to navigate to it through history.

[OneChance]

It means passport.com is trying to use a security certificate on lc4.law5.hotmail.passport.com that was registered to lc1.law13.hotmail.passport.com. I’d just ignore it.

[douglips]

To expand on what OneChance said, a security certificate (used to establish the authenticity of a site you visit on the web) is specific to one computer. It is possible to use a certificate from one computer on a different computer, but your browser should notice this and warn you.

In this case, you can figure that Microsoft had some weirdness and doesn’t have enough certificates and is sharing them. You should worry if it says something like “The security certificate presented belongs to evil.hackers.com”, or anything other than some.computer.at.the.same.company.as.you.were.expecting.