Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Browser certificate warnings
Raised as a usability problem by 7 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2013–2025), in 8 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Constant self-signed certificate warnings confuse end usersUnreviewed
20132026- Warning about self-signed certificates leaves users unsure whether to proceed or what happens2025-12-19
- Users will blindly click through certificate warnings, defeating their purpose2023-11-08
- Self-signed certificate handling is deliberately terrible, unlike SSH's first-connect fingerprint prompt2016-06-22
Certificates are nearly impossible to inspect when errors occurUnreviewed
20132026- Browsers make it nearly impossible to inspect certificates when errors occur2025-09-19
- The browser UI for choosing which certificate authorities to trust is crappy and nobody uses it2014-01-24
- Phone browser shows half a dozen certificate warnings that must be dismissed one by one2013-11-16
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 8 complaints
- Warning about self-signed certificates leaves users unsure whether to proceed or what happens2025-12-19
- Browsers make it nearly impossible to inspect certificates when errors occur2025-09-19
- Users will blindly click through certificate warnings, defeating their purpose2023-11-08
- Some browsers make users click through three times, others block access entirely2022-12-06
- Self-signed certificate handling is deliberately terrible, unlike SSH's first-connect fingerprint prompt2016-06-22
- The browser UI for choosing which certificate authorities to trust is crappy and nobody uses it2014-01-24
- Phone browser shows half a dozen certificate warnings that must be dismissed one by one2013-11-16
- End users are caught in a constant battle with self-signed certificate warnings2013-03-18