diff --git a/setup/linux-installer.py b/setup/linux-installer.py
index cf0f264352..8fbc30a0cc 100644
--- a/setup/linux-installer.py
+++ b/setup/linux-installer.py
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ if enc.lower() == 'ascii':
     enc = 'utf-8'
 calibre_version = signature = None
 urllib = __import__('urllib.request' if py3 else 'urllib', fromlist=1)
-has_ssl_verify = hasattr(ssl, 'PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2') and sys.version_info[:3] > (2, 7, 8)
+has_ssl_verify = hasattr(ssl, 'create_default_context')
 
 if py3:
     unicode = str
diff --git a/src/calibre/utils/https.py b/src/calibre/utils/https.py
index b64cec2532..2a1fd5a7fc 100644
--- a/src/calibre/utils/https.py
+++ b/src/calibre/utils/https.py
@@ -6,14 +6,12 @@ from __future__ import (unicode_literals, division, absolute_import,
 __license__ = 'GPL v3'
 __copyright__ = '2014, Kovid Goyal <kovid at kovidgoyal.net>'
 
-import ssl, socket, re, sys
+import ssl, socket, re
 from contextlib import closing
 
 from calibre import get_proxies
 from calibre.constants import ispy3
-# On OS X PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2 is not available because the SSL library shipped
-# with OS X is too old
-has_ssl_verify = sys.version_info[:3] > (2, 7, 8)
+has_ssl_verify = hasattr(ssl, 'create_default_context') and hasattr(ssl, '_create_unverified_context')
 
 class HTTPError(ValueError):