An Internet era closes

About twelve years ago, having already spent 4-5 years reading and contributing to Usenet newsgroups from work and generally browsing the embryonic web, I decided the time had come to get myself online from home.

Even back then AOL had an appalling reputation, but one of their freebie CDs stuck to the front cover of one of the glossy magazines gave me a bootstrap account with which to do a little investigation and sign up with an alternative ISP. The one I chose: FreeUK. Still a fairly new service back then, as evidenced by the fact that my preferred username - earthmover - was still available, it was simple to sign up, fast (a whole 28.8kbps for my first connection), and best of all as its name implied, free.

Sounds almost too sadly geeky now to be true, but I'll never forget the thrill as the modem popped, whistled and gurgled its way to establish its first connection and open up those worlds of possibility. FreeUK even offered a small amount of webspace too, allowing me to experiment with web design and start down a path that has kept me busy making sites for friends and family from that day to this.

But their business model, built as it was on taking a percentage of the charge for dialling up using a LoCall number, was doomed with the advent of ubiquitous ADSL. Sure, they developed other models. A broadband offering and a paid email service. But having these under the banner of FreeUK always struck me as a bit fail. With them not being free, and all.

A few years ago they introduced a requirement to dial up at least once every 120 days to keep the account alive, and for a short time I did: setting a reminder, listening once more to the modem's song, and leaving the connection up for a minute or so to reset the count. I wonder how many other subscribers with broadband access bothered to do that? When we moved here, in October 2006, it became very awkward to string a modem cable across the study 3 or 4 times a year, so I stopped bothering.

FreeUK emailed me today.

"According to our records you have not used your dial-up service in the last 120 days and as such the account has been flagged for deletion."

Either their records are woefully out of date, or they simply don't bother to check them very often, because by my reckoning it's been at least TEN TIMES that long since I dialled up. Still, they caught up with me. And having flagged the account, they tell me, any further dialling up won't save it. The only way to keep it is to pay for one of their email-only accounts, at a totally non-free price of £14.99 a year.

It gives me a nostalgic pang, but I'm going to have to say goodbye to earthmover@freeuk.com. I can happily render the address here, in full view of the spambots, because in a couple of weeks it will be gone. It has been grossly spammed over the years, as my 1997 self was not so Internet savvy as he thought, and built a personal website with the email address in plain sight. The spam count was small to begin with, but climbed rapidly until at one point I was labouring under a deluge numbering over 100 a day. It's a bit better now. I guess FreeUK spam filters are cleverer, and I haven't ever replied to a spam mail, even to "unsubscribe", so there's been no positive feedback on that address for years. But it was kinda useful as a registration address on the lame sites that require an email address but don't offer you the courtesy of protecting it with an encrypted connection.

I have a googlemail account for that purpose now, but I'll always have fond memories of earthmover@freeuk.com. My very first and, so far, longest-lasting personal email.