Serious Issues with Globe Tattoo Image Cache
We got this message from a reader via email. Apparently, blurred images are not the only problem with Globe Tattoo. I can personally stand blurry images while mobile, if it meant conserving bandwidth (given I also use PowerSurf). But this seems a bit more serious. Read on.
I stumbled upon this post of yours.
I just want to share this odd Globe Tattoo glitch related to their image cache.
It took me a while to figure out that it was my broadband that was causing the problem. In fact, my boyfriend (who’s an engineer) had to help me, and I probably wouldn’t have discovered this without him.
Several days ago, I was testing some HTML mockups I developed for the website I was managing at work. I uploaded them on the website, so I can test them live. The page took a while to load because I was using a lot of hi-re PNG files on it. (And as I’ve discovered some months earlier, Tattoo’s image compression doesn’t work on PNGs.)
When the page loaded, I was horrified. It was displaying images which I have never seen before in my life. I have never visited websites that have those photos, so they certainly can’t be in my cache. I know I have never seen them because these are photos of people, and they look like personal photos people often post on their Facebook. In any case, I reset my cache and even fired my CCleaner, just to be sure. I visited the link of my templates again, and I discovered that some of the images were restored and some weren’t.
It was kind of a frustrating and time-consuming experience, so I won’t describe the troubleshooting I was doing on my own. I had the most paranoid hypotheses for a while, like either (A) my Mac was infected (which is next to impossible, because, well, it’s a Mac, and I also don’t visit suspicious websites), or (B) our website was hacked / targeted for SEO poisoning.
Anyway, after eliminating some variables and hypotheses (particularly, the two cited above), I thought I had fixed the problem when I replaced the PNG files with JPG ones. After a few days, I had that problem again, but it wasn’t as shocking anymore, because only one tiny image was displayed incorrectly.
I didn’t know how to Google what was happening to the mockups I was uploading to the website. I asked my boyfriend to help me, and he had no idea either. Eventually, he found this: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=533721
And if you scroll far down, there was a random user who commented this:
I’ve seen this before, but that was ISP related, not Firefox.
Some ISPs cache some of the regular used data in order to save some bandwidth and then something goes wrong with their caching system (or it is not working properly to start with) and you get that kind of problems.
Seen it with quite a few wireless ISPs here in SA
So when I switched off my Globe, connected to a fixed broadband network, and cleared my cache, true enough, the pages were displaying properly again.
I already know about that no-cache fix. In any case, I was interested to learn whether other people had encountered such problem with Globe Tattoo. Either my Googling skills suck or that problem is just not well documented on the internet yet. While I was browsing though, I came across your blog.
I don’t really know what I want you to do in response to this. Maybe you’ve heard of this issue before? If so, maybe you can show me some references online where I can learn more about this myself?
I also have some security/privacy issues regarding this. What if someone with a Globe Tattoo somewhere is incorrectly loading images on a page and is displaying MY pictures?
If you’ve reached this far, thank you for reading my long email. If not, I suggest you do. :)
