Inaccurate email from Let’s Encrypt saying certificate will expire in 10 days

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1

I received an email from Let’s Encrypt a few hours ago. I received the same email on

7th October
28th September
27th September

The significant part of the contents of the email received a few hours ago is

Hello,

Your certificate (or certificates) for the names listed below will expire in 10 days (on 18 Oct 20 02:29 +0000). Please make sure to renew your certificate before then, or visitors to your website will encounter errors.

We recommend renewing certificates automatically when they have a third of their
total lifetime left. For Let's Encrypt's current 90-day certificates, that means
renewing 30 days before expiration. See
https://letsencrypt.org/docs/integration-guide/ for details.

www.g8wrb.co.uk

However, I believe that the email is inaccurate, as SSL Labs indicates that the certificate expires on Thu, 12 Nov 2020 15:09:53 UTC (expires in 1 month and 4 days)

So it seems that the email is sent in error.

Had the certificate been renewed in the last few hours then the certificate should be valid for 90 days.

Dave

1 Like
2

Hi,

You have a single hostname certificate issued on July 20 2020 that was set to expire on Oct 18 2020. https://crt.sh/?id=3111393846

As of now, you have a new certificate that contains both hostnames (your www and non-www version) issued on Aug 14 2020 and is the certificate currently in use. https://crt.sh/?id=3237782433

According to Let's Encrypt's automated system, the certificate in use are not considered a renewal because it have one additional hostname, so that's why Let's Encrypt send you automated emails notifying the expiry of the old certificate.

However, since you have a new certificate, please make sure to renew it before the expiry date and you are good to go. That email indeed can be ignored.

Thank you

2 Likes
3

Thank you. That makes sense.

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4

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