So. My cable/phone/internet provider, Charter Communications, just hijacked Firefox.
When I opened Firefox, Charter popped up a javascript in-browser window (it behaves more like a frame, but has a close button) telling me that there was important information available regarding my account status, please click here immediately. That's nearly a direct quote; I don't have the image in front of me because I took the photos with my phone and they're still on it.
Yes, I forgot to pay the bill. That's not the bad part. What's disturbing, to put it mildly, about this is that their window completely blocked my 'home' page, which happens to be www.google.com. Worse, this window can only be dismissed; it cannot be moved or resized. Now, I know for a certainty that I would never, under any conceivable circumstances, allow Charter permission to display "important information" on my home page without my explicit consent. That goes double for giving Charter permission to preempt the content I expected (in this case, the "main" Google search page) with their own notifications. finally, the page source contains neither the term 'charter' nor Charter's IP address.
Charter's method and tactics demonstrate behavior we've all long and rightly associated with black-hat hackers and two-bit script kiddies. None of the countermeasures I have in place to prevent pop-up spam of various types from ruining my internet experience so much as blinked when this occurred. By doing this, Charter has proven they have, or can have, direct access to my web browser, theirs to use as they see fit at will with no recourse available to me. As a can-of-worms bonus, it could be argued Charter also executed a denial of service attack against Google.
Is this kind of thing now a common practice among internet providers? I've been online since NCSA Mosaic was the browser of choice, and I have never heard of this happening. Yes, I forgot to pay my bill. My fault, but remember, I paid them $144 two days ago. Charter had no reason to do this.
I'm pretty disturbed by this and, I believe, rightly so. They intentionally destroyed the necessary level of trust that must exist between an internet end-user and their service provider. In identical fashion to black-hat hackers worldwide, Charter demonstrated they can manipulate my browser anytime they please if they believe it is an "important reminder". What else are they doing with my PC (my hardware and software, installed and running locally) that I am unaware of?
I don't like this, and I like it less the more I think about it. Does anyone here have any advice on how I should proceed?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...is the one who really needs IPv6. IPv4 only allows 4 billion unique addresses. With world population over 7 billion, well you get the idea. 
