#93 Help! I'm being held hostage by Tripod!

If your site is on Tripod, don’t send me there! Tripod's Spam Window

Another spam tactic uncovered, this time at Tripod.com. It's getting to the point that you won't know which is worse -- the porno spam on AOL or the visual spam being spewed forth at websites these days. And, we thought Geocities was bad! __ A recent WD&R site review took us to Tripod.com website -- and a few surprises. But we weren't the only ones. A number of readers and WebDesign & Review reviewers complained about Tripod's new SPAM tactics. We visited and understood. __ If you have a website on Tripod don't bother to send us to review it. When you get serious about your site, then you are surely welcome to invite us in. We can’t imagine why any serious web crafter would build a site here just because it’s free.

Tripod has one-upped Geocities in the contest to see who can pelt the reader with the most amount of spam. After we got over the bombs and crashes -- having turned Cookies and QuickTime back on, our arrival to a site under review was met with spam music. Yup! Suddenly this tacky elevator music started playing. Okay there's strike one. __ Then their window came up and prevented anything else from happening until we clicked on something. Okay, it's candy-coated to look like a service... while it was serving cookies and spam. Strike 2. __ Strike 3 and you’re out. I wanted to complain so I clicked on "Contact" in the spam window taking me to the next yet another screen. Here the browser froze as the spam at the bottom played. Everything remained blank (just as you see it) for nearly a full minute until I said enough is enough, and closed the window. __ I came back in with graphics off, and I jumped into a directory skipping the spam window. I never found who to complain to but instead, found the policy pages where they "promise" spam-free user security. Ha! What a joke. There was a "comments" form so I pulled out my trusty spam sleuth email address and wrote. No response yet... but this morning the sleuth mailbox had... guess what: lots and lots of spam from Tripod! __ At least the porno sites are up front and don’t blame it on ads.

How rude? This page waited while the rude spam message at the bottom played. We didn’t come here for this abuse! Don’t just put music on your site and have it start playing as soon as the page opens. Please. If you must have music, offer the visitor the choice to turn it on. They’re getting creative with their scams too. Just read the provisions in the terms concerning that 20%. Right away we suspected that ad had only two reasons for being there: #1 get you OFF the complaints page, and #2 generate more hits.

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