Final exchange deadline Symantec, Thawte and GeoTrust certificates approaches fast

25 September 2018

As previously communicated, the browsers slowly cease their trust in Symantec SSL certificates. For all Symantec, Thawte and GeoTrust certificates issued before 1 December 2017, the final exchange deadline of 23 October is now approaching fast. You can renew your certificates free of charge so that they remain trusted by the browsers.

What's the planning?

Google Chrome ceases trust from version 70 and Mozilla Firefox from version 63, scheduled for 16 and 23 October 2018. For certain users, the impact comes even sooner - the beta versions of the browsers were rolled out from 13 and 5 September respectively. Other browsers such as Safari from Apple will follow later.

What is the impact?

All Symantec, GeoTrust and Thawte certificates (including RapidSSL) that have been issued from the old Symantec infrastructure - before December 1, 2017 - will no longer be trusted from the deadlines mentioned above. Symantec certificates issued after December 1, 2017 are not affected so they do not need to be exchanged to remain trusted. After these deadlines, the certificates will give an error message when visiting a website. The image below shows the error message in Chrome.

Despite a decrease of 20% in the last two months, Mozilla indicates that still 3.5% of the 1 million most popular websites worldwide use an affected certificate. So a lot of certificates will have to be renewed. Therefore take into account a longer delivery time and do not wait until the last moment to exchange your certificates.

Exchange options

You can reissue your Symantec certificates free of charge, in this case you’ll receive a new validated certificate with the same start and end date. Certificates that are valid for less than 210 days at the time of renewal can also be renewed immediately with a maximum term of 1 year. You will receive the remaining period for free, rounded up to months.

I have Symantec certificates, what should I do?

If you have Symantec certificates issued before December 1, 2017, we will send you a message well before the deadline with information about the (free) exchange options. You can also find the certificates to be exchanged in your account. An alternative to exchanging is switching to a different brand. You can exchange your certificates for free to comparable certificates from Comodo. Please contact us for this.

You can find all information about the possibilities, deadlines and reason in our Symantec FAQ.