OPAL Updates and Tips

Resolve "Your Connection is Not Private" EDS Search Errors

Because Springshare has turned on an HSTS policy telling your browser that any web site under the "opal-libraries.org" domain (OPAL website, and your local proxy is a subdomain) should always use https, it can create an issue for the proxy server, particularly where the URL to the proxied site, e.g., EBSCO, is not https.  It's currently most likely to happen when you search your EDS using Chrome. Here's an example for Ursuline.

The proxy server's certificate is only good for subdomains of uc.opal-libraries.org, e.g., https://search-ebscohost-com.uc.opal-libraries.org, but not subdomains of subdomains of uc.opal-libraries.org, e.g., https://search.ebscohost.com.opal-libraries.org, so it appears as a security issue.

Where that's the case, you should be able to resolve the problem by doing the following:

1. Open Chrome and go to chrome://net-internals/#hsts
2. In the "Query HSTS/PKP domain" box enter opal-libraries.org and click query.
3. If it finds anything and you see any output, proceed to the next step. If nothing is found you likely have a different issue going on.
4. Under the heading "Delete domain security policies" enter opal-libraries.org
5. Click the Delete button. It will appear as if nothing has happened. 
6. You can check to make sure everything has cleared by repeating step #2. This time, there should be no results found.
    

Unfortunately, the problem will likely recur when you go to the OPAL web site and then at some point later try to access an http link through the proxy. To clear the error repeat the steps above.

We are currently working on a solution that will likely involve a change to the OPAL web site URL and putting redirects in place. This will take a while to implement, but know that we will have a fix in place as soon as we can.