mediumMultiple Choice
220-1202 Practice Question: A customer reports that their browser shows a…
A customer reports that their browser shows a 'Your connection is not private' warning when visiting their online banking site, but other websites work fine. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
The CompTIA A+ exam often tests the distinction between a site-specific certificate issue (affecting one site) versus a client-side configuration problem (affecting all sites), leading candidates to incorrectly choose the date/time or proxy options.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The bank's SSL certificate has expired or is misconfigured.
The 'Your connection is not private' warning indicates a TLS/SSL certificate validation failure. Since only the banking site is affected, the issue is specific to that site's certificate, not a system-wide problem. The most common cause is that the bank's SSL certificate has expired, is self-signed, or does not match the domain name, triggering the browser's certificate trust check.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The user's system date and time are incorrect.
Why it's wrong here
An incorrect system clock causes certificate validation failures, but these affect every TLS site, not one bank while others load. The stem's single-site scope points to that site's certificate. Clock skew would be the answer if the user saw warnings across all HTTPS sites after a CMOS battery failure.
- ✓
The bank's SSL certificate has expired or is misconfigured.
Why this is correct
An expired or misconfigured certificate on the bank's server triggers a trust failure for that specific host, producing the browser warning. Other sites remain unaffected because their certificates still validate normally. This matches the stem's constraint: the fault is isolated to one site, not the browser or general connectivity.
- ✗
The user's browser is infected with a man-in-the-middle proxy.
Why it's wrong here
A browser-level MITM proxy would typically present its own trusted root, suppressing warnings, or intercept all HTTPS traffic rather than one bank. The single-site scope indicates a certificate problem specific to that host. A MITM proxy would be the cause when many sites show warnings and traffic routes through a proxy.
- ✗
The user's anti-virus is blocking the connection.
Why it's wrong here
Anti-virus blocking produces connection resets, timeouts, or blocked-page notices, not a certificate trust warning naming the bank's certificate. The warning is generated by TLS validation, not by filtering. Anti-virus would be the cause when the browser cannot reach the site at all while other HTTPS sites load normally.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 687 original 220-1202 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 220-1202 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 220-1202 exam.