Help: My ISP is inserting ads.

Factual Questions
1

My cable company (may they burn in hell with their lack of competition) is inserting ads on my internet. They show as a frame on top of whatever it is I am browsing. You can close them but that takes a reload of the page. It doesn’t happen often, but once is once too many. My ad blocker doesn’t block them.

I know it is my cable company and not some other malware because it is all ads for their packages and pay-per-view events.

How can I stop these?

Also I have read that those types of ISP inserted ads are a big gaping hole for hackers. How at risk am I?

2

When you set up the account, did you have to run an install CD or something? If so, it might have set your browser to point at their proxy server.

3

Which browser are you using? If you’re using IE8 try restoring it to default settings

Menu -> Tools -> Internet Options

Click on the Advanced tab

About 2/3 the way down you see “Reset”

4

Change your DNS servers to Google’s servers and see if it makes a difference:

5

I am running Chrome on W7. I didn’t have to install anything. I have been using Google’s DNS servers since day one (I am a bit of a Google junkie).

6

As a method of last resort, you might start using Tor. They can’t screw with something that’s strongly encrypted.