Is it really a free ISP???

[Rickee]

Hi All,

While I've been living on the brink on obscurity at Sysopt, I still do check in, from time to time, on this great forum. It's incredible how this site has evolved. I always make a point to only add your 2 cents worth if your adding value to an issue. So hence my refrain from polluting the posts.

Getting to my point, I would like your opinion on these free ISPs. I received one in my morning paper and wondered how safe it is. First, since advertising is their only source of revenue, I am left to wonder if they have some way of monitoring: a) the sites you have visited or b) keystokes you enter.

I have heard about subliminal advertising on the web so Free ISP may be a great way to practice and promote it. Can their monitoring techniques pose a security breech when logging into financial institutions or e-commerce sites?

As one can tell, I am both paranoid and ignorant of how the internet really works so any ingights from those with more knowledge is greatly appreciated.

Regards and have a great holiday.

[Wiz]

they track your movement, but every ISP does that. They have an ad in the upper right corner, and they also sell your email address to the highest bidder, lots of junk mail. I know this cuz my brother decided to get it.

[Nutcase]

Well about the junk mail you can avoid it... just dont use the e-mail address that they provide! Tell them that you are going to when you are signing up but just dont bother to. Thats what I did after my ISP wanted to kick me off.

[Ed_S]

Can't speak for other free ISPs, but I've used Freewwweb for three years.
No banners, no junk mail. Good service.
Frankly, I don't know how they do it, but I'm happy.

[Axel]

I tried netzero for a few days, but quickly decided the $7 I pay a month is worth not seeing the ads and a reduction in SPAM.

I'm on Mindspring's el-cheapo plan and have a friend host my web page and e-mail for me.

Do most of my browsing at work anyway looking for extreme solutions to impossible problems - this board has been one of the better ones so far, plus 99% of the folks here are pretty good about stuff.

[Eli]

I assume you're talking about 3Web? I got one this morning as well. I've heard that for this one you have to click on a pop-up message or something every twenty minutes or so if you want to keep surfing...

[codybear]

I use freewwweb also and NO banners ...great service www.freewwweb.com (http://www.freewwweb.com)

[Zacko10000]

How does freewwweb make any $$$?

[Rickee]

Eli,

You are correct (fellow Mississaugian). I don't think I have any intentions of using it but it just intrigued me. Internet here is really affordable so why not promote this industry.

One lesson I've learned about free stuff is that most it ain't free. There's always an agenda in the background which must be weighted with your decision to accept or not.

Regards!

[Wiz]

pop up adds shouldn't be that hard to kill. it would be easy just to write a lil proggie that kills them everytime they show up

[psyklone]

no, it isn't real hard to do. i do them for netzero all the time. actually it doesn't even take writing a program, i just re-write the ones that are there and .... woops ... it seems i lost the banner! heheheh wooohoo! freedom!

[Eli]

Hey Rickee, small world eh?

A buddy of mine has used 3web and he has had no complaints. I downloaded it (a few weeks ago) and tried but I couldn't get two seperate computers using three different modems to connect. I'll have to try it off the CD sometime and see what happens. I did notice that you do NOT give them a credit card number during registration, so if they wanted to bill you they'd have to find another way...