What happens in the second after you press Enter
Say what your machine actually does in the second between typing an address and seeing a page — and that will make half the warnings you have ever seen suddenly make sense.
Between pressing Enter and seeing a page, your machine asks three separate questions of three different strangers. Everything that can go wrong on the internet goes wrong at one of those three, and the warning you get usually names which.
That is the padlock. It is not a badge of good character and it never was. It is a short way of saying the second and third questions were answered — this machine proved it owns the name, and the conversation is scrambled.
Key points
- Where is it — a name is turned into a number by a directory service
- Are you really them — the machine proves the name is its own, with a signed certificate
- Say it where nobody can hear — the two agree on a scramble for everything after
- The padlock means the last two were answered, and says nothing about honesty
- The message you get usually names which question failed, and that is where to look
What to remember
- Most internet messages name which of the three questions failed. Once you can hear that, the message stops being a scolding and becomes a diagnosis.
- A padlock is about privacy and ownership of a name. It has never once been about honesty.
- When everything fails at once, suspect the thing all of it shares — which is nearly always at your end of the wire.
Try this
Next time any page gives you trouble, before doing anything else, read the message and say aloud which of the three it failed at. You will be right most of the time, and being right about where a problem is saves more time than knowing any particular fix.
Practice: What happens in the second after you press Enter. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.