Query about monitoring unknown Internet traffic

[silver.bullet at zoho.com]

On Sun, 18 Oct 2015 08:14:50 +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
>However, that by itself would not explain 200kbps down and 20kbps up.

The manual/documentation found in the help menu of an app could be on
the hard disk or could require Internet access, perhaps without
opening an external Internet browser, IOW we sometimes might access the
Internet without being aware of it.

What ever does cause the unwanted traffic, it's unlikely that the
Ubuntu install is compromised, more likely regular undamaged software
uses the Internet.

The policy of Ubuntu is to autostart by default each and every thing
that can be autostarted.

Another default is that the package command-not-found is installed.
This comes with 2 disadvantages.

1. After a typo there's a delay caused by command-not-found searching
   it's data base, this alone should be the reason to remove it.
   However, this isn't related to the topic.

2. An inexperienced users will install a recommended package, if it's
   suggested by command-not-found. A command was missing, but the
   recommended package includes several other command, 2 cron jobs to
   automatically access the Internet in the background, a daemon that
   slows down desktop performance and that disables USB ports, if they
   were idle for a second ;).

IOW the user-friendliness approach comes with undesirable side effects
and one side-effect could be unwanted Internet access.

Regards,
Ralf