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UK business customers visiting www.ukbusiness.hsbc.com last week, were greeted by a message explaining that the site's security certificate had expired on 4 March, before asking if they wanted to continue into the site.

A spokesperson for the company says the problem lasted for a day before being resolved, and that the affected certificate was only used to protect the security messages displayed on its site.

"The certificate is not managing any data encryption or security it just allows the security message to be displayed and allows us to change this message if we need to," says a spokesperson for the bank.

Apparently, following the warning about the security certificate customers were then free to click through to their online banking services.

"Obviously we apologise to any customers who were concerned about the message they saw or inconvenienced in any way."

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