Everything starts with an idea, that’s what I certainly believe in. So it’s logical someone had an idea of showing some kind of toolbar in webpages being an Internet Service Provider. But the idea being implemented quite a while ago and still being active by the second largest Internet Service Provider of The Philippines seems like unimaginable. And I remember I had problems with my Globe connection before, figuring out that indeed Globe made changes to the html codes of webpages I was testing. Imagine, the mail man opening your mail, making changes to the letter inside and then deliver the changed letter. And you would presume the sender had written the letter.
And I remember I sent an e-mail to Globe customer support about it. And never got a reply.
And now, with my new Globe connection, using a fully different technology, last night there were some, or actually a lot, of pages working perfectly here on our local development system. But they were not when viewing them from their (real) internet location. And it didn’t make sense.
And today I wanted to fix it and found some kind of weird script (web page computer program) in my code. So I started looking for a virus, locally as well as on the web server. And I couldn’t find anything and it also didn’t make any sense what was happening.
And then I remember from before that I presumed, or actually knew, that Globe was actually making changes to the html source of webpages. And that that was even one of the main reasons we mainly used our Globe connection as a backup and not as our main internet connection, even though it was faster than our Smart connection.
So today, actually very happy with my internet access again, I encountered very big problems again with a very simple webpage that didn’t make sense. And it still doesn’t make sense, although I am starting to believe that the cause must be indeed in Globe making changes to webpages. Imagine, that is something like the people in the post office opening your letters and making changes to them. Who would ever imagine a post office doing that?
Well, Globe does, as after some research I found confirmation that also other web developers had experienced similar problems, especially making testing websites very hard.
And even if people were informed properly about this and agree with the addition of some ISP tool or advertisment bar or something added by their ISP, I still would disagree, as web page code, html code and especially web page scripts, are very sensitive and may stop working with the slightest error, especially if you add a generic script to any web page. And the script itself would take bandwidth, would consume from your daily or monthly volume if you have one. And it would take computer time, meaning webpages showing up slower. But the worst thing, as I found in my case, is that web pages might not show up properly or may not work at all.
So yes, the idea was probably a great idea. But in this case it should have never been implemented as to me an ISP should just provide the (internet) road towards your house and not change the content of the stuff going over it.