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Free Webhosting, Free Websites - How Free Is "Free"?
By Farai .S.  Ndawana



Free Webhosting, Free websites - How Free is "free"?

The past five years has seen the proliferation of many a webhosting company offering "free" webhosting and all other kinds of freebies to coax the unsuspecting user into hosting with them or in exchange of harmless personal details, email addresses and seemingly harmless information.

But then, that's the catch. Nothing is really free. What the average user surfing the Net doesn't realize is that we are living in the Information Age - an age where personal details, shopping habits, preferences of people are sold heartlessly to marketing regimes and are collected for a profit.
These companies give you seemingly free services in exchange of your identity and moreso in exchange of your email addresses. After all that, you start wondering why lately you have been receiving so much unprecedented spam? Why all of a sudden you are winning online prices, why many an email tries to solicit your participation in a survey or they offer you those Viagra promotions and the list goes on.

Sounds familiar? Oh yes. That's as annoying as they come. However, to put all this into perspective, I find it relevant to discuss the issue of what is now dubbed an "online identity". The advent, of smart phones, affordable internet, facebook, twitter and all other social media has created the need for people to realize that by participating in any online activity, one leaves internet footprints behind. An identity, an internet profile is unwittingly created for you as a consequence of the forums one visits, the comments one makes, the comments of others, facebook, google profiles - all this provided a veritable resource of information about yourself.

It is now necessary for one to be wary of keeping a clean internet profile because you don't know who is going to access your information. Employers are now in the habit of "googling" prospective employees before hiring, not to mention potential business associates, partners, fianc