This browser window showing http://elementary.io/
appears after I installed then uninstalled the Pantheon environment:

^{Originally this occurred after (and possibly before) ppa-purging the PPA only when not connected to the internet - a window without a title that the window manager would ignore would appear, then dissapear. The grep process in the background was me searching the root of the system for clues to the problem - I found that some settings in gconf had been left which were causing a additional issue with the elementary theme set as default, which I then apt-get auotremoved)}

^{After apt-get autoremoving the elementary packages it opens properly in a web browser}

It seems to appear randomly (in a random web browser - I have Firefox, Chromium and Chrome installed - this started happening before installing Chrome), and after unlocking the screen, connecting to the internet etc. I think the URL it is pointing to is http://start.elementaryos.org which then redirects to http://elementary.io/

I installed it as shown here, and then removed the PPAs using ppa-purge, and then used apt-get autoremove on any remaining bits.

I know this a third-party PPA, but I don't think these issues should occur after removing it. It also causes issues with the Unity desktop as shown here. This feels uncomfortably like the things you get with adware/freeware/malware on windows..

Using Ubuntu 14.04 64bit

EDIT: By looking at htop I have found that the process is started as root the run as the active user (gamer) using su:

I have not a clue what point this has apart to encourage the rapid removal of everything relevant to elementaryOS...