Firefox's Site Identity Button

Beacon Blog Article

By Beacon News | Published February 1, 2020 | Categories: Web Development

A client recently asked me why their e-commerce site displayed the message "This site does not provide identifying information" when clicking on or mousing over the "site identity" button in the address bar in Firefox.

Location of site identity button in Firefox

Message displayed by non-secure site
Message displayed after clicking on site identity button (non-secure page)

This button is actually used by Firefox to check the security level of the page (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Site%20Identity%20Button).  The color and message displayed is directly related to the SSL certificate state of the page (secure/encrypted vs. non-secure) and, in fact, displays an entirely different message on secure check-out related pages:

Message displayed by SSL secured site
Message displayed after clicking on site identity button (secure page)

Though you can turn off this functionality on your own browser, it is not possible to change the setting on the web site itself, since it is a security feature for Firefox.

Let's get to work!

Contact Us