I keep getting the following error when I try to access the boards.
I’m using Mozilla Firefox 55.0.3 on a HP running Windows 10 Home. I’ll be ok for an hour or two then it will pop up intermittently when I go to open a thread. Sometimes I’ll get it three times in a row, sometimes I’ll open four or five threads in a row without seeing it.
Is this a board, Firefox, Windows, or Avast problem?
Thanks in advance - DESK
That warning will appear when you try to use HTTPS in the URL instead of HTTP. I am not sure why you would be linked to HTTPS from the site.
Are you by any chance searching for threads from Google? My understanding is that Google sometimes incorrectly redirects you to the HTTPS URL.
If not that, I would check if you have any extensions, or if Avast is redirecting you for some reason.
A workaround is to remove the s from the https part of the URL.
If the URL is not https, then I don’t know what’s wrong. Firefox should only do that for https URLs.
There’s one more aspect to the problem.
A recent update to Firefox has started detecting pages that have a login feature and are not being sent over https. The browser complains by a not very clear message that “If you were to use that login box then your username and password would be sent in the clear. Which is not a good idea in general.”
If you are not logged in, then every SDMB page has a login box. So if you use the fresh update of Firefox to connect to SDMB over http and you are not already logged in, you’ll get the scary warning that doesn’t actually say what it means.
This has been addressed a couple times recently in ATMB.
The fact SDMB also doesn’t have the correct https security certificate installed means there’s sort of a Catch-22 here. For folks with the latest Firefox they have a choice: Use http and get one scary ambiguous mealy-mouthed security warning. Or use https and get a different equally scary ambiguous mealy-mouthed security warning. Oh well.
…and it won’t be just Firefox.
I was getting the same thing yesterday and I too was flummoxed. I did note that my ad-blocker seemed to have shut off for some reason (trying to enjoy this site without an ad-blocker in general is another horror-story) and as soon as I reinstalled it the problem went away.
Huh. I wonder if there’s a rogue ad trying to redirect you guys to an HTTPS address that isn’t working.
Couple of things;
First, thanks for all the help and info. The last time it happened, I checked and it was sending me to an HTTPS url. All the links I use are from the actual boards, not from Google searches or anything else. Also, I stay logged in here, so no log in boxes
Second, I think you might be on to something about the rogue ad. I haven’t had this PC long and I still occasionally get pop-ups, mainly on the boards. Maybe I’ll play with my pop-up blocker settings and see what happens.
No. I block all ads and I get the same thing.
Fact is, all of the browser makers want HTTPS to become the default. It improves security to have everything encrypted, by default, and now it’s up to the website owners to fix any problems they may have with that.
Ignoring this isn’t going to make it go away, and telling people to use older versions of browsers isn’t going to go over well, either.
Hey, I have an idea: Whine about it. Whining always works! I’m sure nobody’s whined before. 
Well, I’ve found that there are ads getting past AdBlock Plus. I have that enabled by default and it claims it’s blocking some ads, but one ad still gets by, one for Google Nexus.
This is consistent in Firefox and Chrome.
Now, normally I’m signed in and as a charter member, I don’t see ads at all, but I’m getting “might as well post your SSN and bank login info while you’re at it” messages when I click on the username field to log on via Firefox 
Oh: when I go directly to boards.straightdope.com on Firefox I get the message when I try to type in my user name. If I manually type “http://” before that, same deal - and in fact when it displays the URL in the URL bar, the http is gone. If I type https instead, I get the Google screen mentioned above.
I use uBlock Origin and that wasn’t true when I posted, but it’s true now.
Or, rather, was until I fixed it with a custom rule.
Can you share what that custom rule looks like, please?
||boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/*/ads/*$image
That should be ready to be copied-and-pasted into any ad blocker compatible with AdBlock, including AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin.