If you are a MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) customer then you might be facing a weird problem, whenever you open a website then a pop-up ads comes from bottom right side of the screen, problem with these ads are that MTNL is injecting these ads and these are not served by any website.
Whats Happening In Background?
Actually these ads are being served by Adphonso, which is a rich media ad company and directly connected with ISPs, like MTNL and inject ads.
Whats the issue?
As these ads are directly injected by ISP which means ad company might be tracking your movement on internet and looks what you are surfing and doing. And this also slows down your internet speed and page load time as these ads being served first before page loads.
How To Block These Pop-Up Ads?
If you are using a ad blocking extension like AdBlock Plus then it wont help you too, even if you are using private mode or incognito mode then also these ads keep coming. There are few methods which you can use to block these ads like:-
Modify you HOST file : You can modify your system’s host file and block adphonso.com and 203.94.243.40. But problem with this method is that when you load page it keep waiting for response from ad and sometime you might face problem and then have to reload page.
And if you using wireless network then you have to edit host file on every system and if you use any mobile device too on same network then you wont have any option to block ads on it.
Use VPN :- You can use VPN service, as these services uses SSL connection then ads wont be served to you, but these services are paid one.
Add filter to your router page :- This is the easiest and most preferred method, you have to logon to your router page and navigate Access Management -> Filters and enable URL filtering add the values adphonso.com and 203.94.243.40 in the URL indexes (These setting might differ router to router).
On the money! I drilled down and found out that this problem is related to isp mtnl n was thinking of blocking these ads thru my router. The post is very helpful.
Keep the good work going sir!
Thanks ! just did this. Lets see if they pop up anymore
Just got these ads showing up on MTNL! This time the IP was : 203.94.227.140
I was spooked the first time I saw this ad creep up from the bottom. And I think I was on google’s homepage that time, so I was stunned with the sudden realization that chrome browser is now serving ads! But then I got ads elsewhere too! Firefox, mobile :O same shady sliding-from-the-bottom ad obstructing my browsing! after the 3rd or 4th encounter I noticed that all were MTNL, which was in fact the “Eureka!!” moment for me. And now I landed here after google’ing only to realize that this infiltration has been happening for over a year now! I started getting these ads since only a couple of weeks ago. Their approach might be region specific, and the Nana Chowk Grant Road zone hq has initiated the infiltration now! But is this even allowed? Is the ISP allowed to spam us with such ads and monitor our internet use through a third party like “Adphonso” ?