We will soon be implementing some changes on the Avitar Assessing Kiosk web site (data.avitarassociates.com) designed to eliminate warnings some visitors to the site may see in their web browsers. As many of your municipal web sites have links directing property owners from your site to the Assessing Kiosk site to review their assessments, you and/or your web site administrator should check to make sure any existing links on your municipal web site will still work as anticipated after we implement the changes. Here are the details:

Originally, many links from municipal web sites to the Avitar Assessing Kiosk were added using the plain old HTTP protocol (e.g. “http://data.avitarassociates.com…“). Most visitors to the site are just browsing assessment data, and visitors that wish to purchase a subscription enter all of the sensitive financial information on the PayPal site (via HTTPS) so it hasn’t been critical to require the more secure HTTPS protocol on the Assessing Kiosk itself. Nonetheless, years ago we added a secure SSL certificate for the site, enabling it to communicate via both HTTP and the more secure HTTPS protocol.

But lately, more and more internet browsers are warning and/or flat-out preventing users from visiting sites that are not communicating via HTTPS. As such, on August 1st we will be adding a setting on the Assessing Kiosk so that if a visitor either types or clicks on a link that is plain old HTTP, they will be redirected to communicate with the site using HTTPS, thus avoiding security warnings from their browsers (as well as calls to your office or ours). However, if you have existing links on your municipal website you should double-check that they will still work as you or your web site administrator may need to update them.

Examples of Links That Will Work:

http://data.avitarassociates.com
https://data.avitarassociates.com
http://data.avitarassociates.com/logondirect.aspx ...etc.
https://data.avitarassociates.com/logondirect.aspx ...etc.

(...etc. = Communities that have purchased the expanded kiosk
configuration may have a link ending with "logondirect.aspx ..."
and additional parameters to bypass the kiosk login screen.
These will still work provided the link begins with 
"http://data." or "https://data.")

Examples of Links THAT WILL NOT WORK:

http://www.data.avitarassociates.com
https://www.data.avitarassociates.com
http://www.data.avitarassociates.com/logondirect.aspx ...etc.
https://www.data.avitarassociates.com/logondirect.aspx ...etc.

(The *.avitarassociates.com wildcard SSL certificate can authenticate the “data.avitarassociates” subdomain individually, but not when it is preceded as in “www.data.avitarassociates” so just get rid of the “www.”.)

If you have any questions or problems you can call us for assistance.