ISP spamming me

[BeerFan]

Hello folks,

Every time I open Firefox today, i get this annoying message from Cox, my ISP, about email being down. How can i prevent this type of intrusion from my ISP? I'm using OpenDNS for my local network already, so I was surprised this even came through.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Use a custom CSS file.

#ELEMENTID { display: none; }

This probably still works for Firefox.

http://www.wizcrafts.net/blogs/2007/01/how_to_create_a_custom_personal_styleshe.html

[Brandon H Supervisor]

yeah i've been getting that today as well

they really want people to know that the mail servers are down apparently

[ArialBlue]

ISPs can do that?!

[n_K]

ISPs can do that?!

They can, they shouldn't be though.

[soldier1st]

Try another browser then scan for baddies then check host's file. If not, call them up and complain. You may get a free month of service if it's true.

ISPs can do that?!

Depends on the companie(s) policies. Normally they can't.

[primexx]

they may be able to opt you out of it, at least call and complain like mad, packet injections are just not cool.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

If you click on the grey "X" in the upper-right corner of the dialog, does that prevent it from reappearing?

Since they no doubt did this as a means of trying to reduce the amount of calls they receive regarding the email outage, I would suggest is calling them to ask them if they can disable the message, if possible. You might also want to let them know what you think of this approach to notifying customers when you contact them.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[+BudMan MVC]

I would suggest you call them and complain, this is actually very big news. You have an ISP injecting into your stream, that should be of huge concern to anyone using an ISP.

So they use to announce an outage, what about using it to inject ads to lower your price? They are there to provide a connection, not mess with the data in your connection. There will be some major blow back to this for sure.

If you need to announce details, then post it on twitter, announce it on tech sites, put it on your home page, your network status page, etc. etc.. Call your users if you wish - but messing with their data stream is a big no no.

[sagum]

I would suggest you call them and complain, this is actually very big news. You have an ISP injecting into your stream, that should be of huge concern to anyone using an ISP.

So they use to announce an outage, what about using it to inject ads to lower your price? They are there to provide a connection, not mess with the data in your connection. There will be some major blow back to this for sure.

If you need to announce details, then post it on twitter, announce it on tech sites, put it on your home page, your network status page, etc. etc.. Call your users if you wish - but messing with their data stream is a big no no.

Or what if they re-not simply injecting ads, but rather replacing existing ads with their own ad-tokens. We'd never know and it's blatant abuse of all services. I'd email your ISP and CC the letter to google ads, doubleclick and the rest of the abuse@ emails, explain that you think they've been replacing the adverts with their own tokens and see if someone can investigate it. It'll annoy the hell out of your ISP and the advertisers will want to see the logs from the ISPs to make sure. Could make for a fun time and if enough people do it... yeah your ISP will stop.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

it was only appearing yesterday so no real reason to complain, all's good again today

[+BudMan MVC]

I don't care if it happened for 10 seconds - you can't go injecting stuff into a data stream like that.