"I’ve been speaking with the owner about SSL before I invest in becoming a member, but she’s been told by the dev of the platform (it’s a franchise system called ShopCity.com) that SSL is more about Google’s monopolizing visibility of content, and less to do with security" This is an interesting observation of how Google's technical crusades often align with its profit interests. The main threat that HTTPS everywhere…
I don't want my ISP to inject JavaScript to random pages or analyze my traffic. That should be downright illegal. They should be like water supply company: provide me damn clean water and get out of my way. Somehow the sewage company doesn't analyze my urine (I hope ) to figure out if I prefer spicy or sour food and get an extra buck from third parties, and somehow they're still in the business .
I don't want my search engine to do that either. They should provide me damn accurate results and get out of my way.
Unfortunately, whereas I have a choice of several good ISPs here (UK), I have a choice of precisely one good search engine - Google - and it analyses my traffic to high heaven. (And I've tried DuckDuckGo, on several occasions for several weeks at a time, and I'm afraid it still sucks.)