Foul Advertisements
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(This site has moved to Recently, it seems stormloader.com has taken to inserting ads into members' web pages. When I first started using this service in 1998, Icestorm told us they would not force us to place ads on our pages, and this is why I signed up and recommended them wholeheartedly to anyone who asked. Now Icestorm has handed off their free web service to stormloader.com, a company who has decided to reverse this policy without notifying anyone or explaining themselves. Advertisements not only cheapen the website and make it take longer to load, they also imply that I endorse these foolish companies and their frivolous activities. Furthermore the ad company that stormloader.com has affiliated itself with is doubleclick.net, a huge supplier of random banner ads noted for its invasion of users' privacy. When I e-mailed stormloader.com, they responded with a generic reply from "Management." It said that adding banner advertisements would be allowing them to add many "great features," such as "email, chat rooms, message boards, personals, auctions, greeting cards, website design contests with cash prizes, weekly cash giveaways, and much more..." They also said they would be increasing everyone's web space to 10mb and needed the ad revenue to support this move. I have never come close to using up my current 4mb limit. By far, most web sites, even among businesses, are under 5mb. No one has any use for these so-called features unless they want to become cheap amazon.com lookalikes. The rest of us just need two or three measly megabytes of hard drive on a www server...was it necessary for them to sell us all out like that? I encourage stormloader.com members to 1) find another place to host your site, and 2) Write to reviewers such as thefreesite.com and let them know exactly what is going on so that they can include this information on their directories. - JD |