My ISP is the largest in the country and known as SLT (Sri Lanka Telecom).
Through a single router/ADSL Modem, we have a small home network.
Lately, I see a message appearing from my ISP asking me if I want extended bandwidth and I just close it without responding. There's no pattern that I can figure out here that causes the message to appear.
But the most weird thing is that this is NOT a pop-up window. It seems like a DIV on my browser. There's nothing on my computer that could allow a third person to access my resources (at least I like to think so). My OS is Ubuntu 12.04 and the browser is FireFox.
Here's a typical example (most frequently experienced)...
Steps:
- Open new tab on FireFox (FF).
- type the URL stackoverflow.com
- On top of the site, I see a DIV (not pop up window) that contains my ISP's message.
- The URL shows stackoverflow.com
- I close the message (using the x button that is part of the DIV)
- A brief message appears but it's too fast to read, and then the actual SO page comes up.
I'm starting to get suspicious and worried. This seems to happen on all computers on the network.
Thus my question:
Is this normal with the new technology or is this something to be worried about? I think this is like an opportunity for the ISP to do some free, non-solicited ads. But it could be more than that if they can control what appears on my page in place of the real thing. Is there something I can do?
The worst thing is that the question they ask can affect how I get billed. So if one of my kids respond to it, this can be a problem for me.
Thanks for your inputs!