Free Internet: What's it Really Cost?

Merle If you're sick and tired of paying 10 or 20.00 a month
to your ISP for Internet Access, listen closely to what
I'm about to say. "You don't have to." Yep, that's right;
you can surf the Web totally free if you don't mind giving
up some of your precious screen real estate to banner ads.

Most of the Free providers want your personal information
as well and will ask you to fill out lengthy registration
forms when signing up to use their services. They'll want
to know if you're married, own or rent, if you have children,
and so on and so forth. Some of them will even track your
surfing patterns and sell that information to third parties.

According to Jupiter Communications, last year 2.5 million
people signed up for free Net access. That number is expected
to grow to over 10 million by the year 2003. That's a lot
of people who are interested in getting something for nothing.

Let's take a look at some of the more popular services and
what they have to offer.

Address.com: This free ISP tracks your surfing patterns for
ad targeting purposes. Downloading and setup are fairly simple.
The banner they place on your screen is 486x86 pixels, which
is not a bad size for this type of service. They also offer
free email accounts, free webpages, and URL forwarding.

FreeInternet.com: The banner size for this service when
undocked is 509x76. You'll be asked for a lot of personal
information when registering and your surfing habits will
be tracked and shared with third parties for targeting
banner ads. Their website offers free email accounts,
weather, shopping, and its own instant messaging system.

AltaVista Free Internet: http://www.microav.com
Another free dial up from the search engine Alta Vista.
service. The banner placed on your monitor is 502x84 pixels
undocked. The sign-up process is pretty simple and they
don't ask for as much personal information as some
of the others. During setup you're given the opportunity
to select backup dial-in numbers in case the first one
is busy. This download works on Windows or Macs and is
small at 600K.

BlueLight.com: Did someone say K-Mart? You'd be right
on with this free dial up service offered from Yahoo
and K-mart combined. The registration process is pretty
painful as they ask for a lot of personal information.
Your surfing patterns are tracked and shared with
third parties. The banner on your screen measures 486x86
pixels. The download is large at 3.51 MB but if you
don't want to wait you can fill out a form on the website
and you'll be sent a CD.

NetZero.com: With claims of over 4 million registered
users, NetZero must be doing something right. Registration
requires a lot of information and the download is large
at 4.76 MB. The banner on your screen will be 800x88 pixels
and you'll be forced to click on it from time to time
or face disconnection. Like most other free services
they track your surfing patterns and share them with
third parties. They also offer free email accounts and
customer support.

There are many free dial-up options to choose from.
If you don't like the ones presented here, go to
http://www.nzlist.org/user/freeisp for even more
choices.

Whoever coined the phrase "you don't get nothing for
free" obviously never knew about free Internet access.
As long as you don't mind giving up some of your
personal information and viewing banner ads, free
dial up is not such a bad deal. Even if you decide
to keep your paid ISP, a free dial-up account
can come in handy as a backup should your
ISP ever go down.

Free Internet access can save you a lot of money,
so what are you waiting for? Take the money you'll
save and buy your honey something nice to help
make up for all that time you spend online and if
that doesn't work you can always save up for a
good divorce attorney.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Merle
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