Help!!! As of a week ago, my easy
existence on the internet ended. I started
getting the following dialog box whenever
I tried to access a "secure" site, such as
online banking, mutual fund tracking...

"Unable to establish a secure connection
to (whatever site I'm trying to access). There is a
problem with the security certificate from
that site (The identity certificate is not yet
valid). The information you view will be
readable to others while in transit, and it
may not go to the intended party.
Continue loading this page?"

Argh. I don't know what to do. My
computer's a couople of years old. I have
a G3 Powerbook, OS8.1, 56k internal
modem, running Microsoft Explorer 5.0 for
Mac. Do I need to trash my whole setup?
I hope not...

While I don't think this is too likely, I suppose the site(s) in question could have recently-expired security certificates. If this is the case, you might be out of luck until the sites themselves fix things.

Other than that, make sure you're doing the standard stuff - install the latest IE 5 Service Release from versiontracker.com, and you might want to upgrade to Mac OS 9.2.1, since you'll probably find it much faster on that PowerBook G3 than 8.1 is. I know my PBG3/266 is a lot faster with 9.2.1 than it was with 8.1.

If upgrading IE doesn't fix anything, try removing the various extensions associated with IE and then re-install it. Your security database could have been corrupted somehow.

p