Orbi RBR750 port forwarding rejects connections for "security reasons". How can it be fixked

[jc1742]

Well, I'm still working on making Port Forwarding work.  I'm installing an Orbi RMR750 router, and it's working for outgoing web requests.  I have a server running on a local machine, and I've set up port forwarding to that machine's port 80.  When I try to access it from an outside site (my cell phone set to use only the phone system, not the local wifi). I get a dire warning that my site may be an evil site trying to get at all my personal data, and the server never gets the request.  

I've spent a couple of days trying to make this work.  Anyone know how I might find the bogus "security" guard and make my web server available to the public?  We have lots of data, including rehearsal and performance schedules for a couple of groups, and they'd really like people to have access to that data. It's not a security threat, really! 😉

[CrimpOn]

You may be at the mercy of modern web browsers, which have a sacred duty to protect us from ourselves.

http (port 80) is not encrypted.  all information is send as plain text.  thus it is, by definition, insecure.  The vast majority of commercial web sites now use https (port 43) and have SSL certificates which are issued by a recognized certificate authority.

My guess is that somewhere on this rejection screen there is an option called "Advanced" or something like that which can be used to tell the web browser go to the web site anyway and quit bugging me.

If you want to have "ordinary people" access this web site without being annoyed by security notices, then it is essential that the web site (a) be https, and (b) have an SSL certificate that is issued by a recognized certificate authority.

[jc1742]

Well, maybe, but the folks (like us) who run a web site explicitly to make certain info public, would object that people intercepting the downloads is doing exactly what we want.  It's making our info available to even more of the puiblic. 😉  The packets contain nothing but the IP headers (present for encrypted messages, too), and the info we're trying to get out to the public.  

So what info is there in the download packets of a public file for which interception is a security risk?  There are no passwords or other secret information in either the headers or the packets' data. 

Note that I'm not saying that no network communications contain secrets.  Some, like email transfers, certainly do, but that's normally not done via http links. But http was designed to make posting of public data possible, and was started without any passwords or encryption with the explicit understanding that http was for "public" data that anyone can download.  While we do have organizations that want to limit access to members, and their secrecy is understandable, the fact remains that that's not really why http was invented or why it became so popular.  

[CrimpOn]

Correct.  Web browsers complaining about http web sites is a major pain. As far as I can see, they all do it now.

I think there is a setting on many browsers which automatically puts "https" in front of any URL where the user did not specify http or https.

My point is that directing people to an http only web site is almost guaranteed to confuse them as their browsers warn them "Don't go there!!!!"