up vote 7 down vote favorite
3
share [g+] share [fb]

What aspect of a site's SSL certificate causes IE's address bar to turn green?

I'm working on a site which already uses SSL successfully, but am interested to know if there are different levels of certificate.

link|improve this question
100% accept rate
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Yes, it is a different level of certificate, as you say.

It's green when it is an Extended Validation Certificate. See Extended Validation Certificate at Wikipedia: "[...] a special type of X.509 certificate which requires more extensive investigation of the requesting entity[2] by the Certificate Authority before being issued. [...]"

The cheapest of certificates are usually domain-validation only, meaning the only thing that the certificate authority is guaranteeing is that the requestor of the certificate has control of the domain name. That's a very low threshold. The extended validation certificates require more than that. For instance, they verify the legal status of the business that is requesting the certificate, etc.

link|improve this answer
7  
It's also a good way for the certificate authorities to make extra cash. Those green address bar certificates are not cheap. – The How-To Geek Aug 3 '09 at 16:59
feedback
up vote -3 down vote

It's green when it is a trusted certificate.

link|improve this answer
Trusted is a necessary but not sufficient condition. It needs to be an Extended Validation Certificate. Compare, say, paypal.com (EVC) with secure.ncix.com/login (trusted, but not an EVC.) In my IE8, the former is green, and the latter is not. But, both are trusted certificates. – Chris W. Rea Aug 3 '09 at 16:35
2  
Trusted by who? – grawity Aug 3 '09 at 18:25
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.