Why isn't my web host trusted?

May 9, 2012 4:12 PM

Free web host advice needed

When I needed a place to store my website, I thought it would be easy to find free web space online. It was more difficult than I imagined, but I finally found www.awardspace.net and made my site. I had the option of choosing a subdomain, and the most relevant one was mygamesonline.org.

The problem I encountered was when I tried to link to my site on Facebook. This is what it says when I try to post:

The content you're trying to share includes a link that's been blocked for being spammy or unsafe:

mygamesonline.org

I got around this by linking to my site on my MySpace and my Xanga, and then just posting those links on Facebook instead. A bit of a hassle, but still reachable.

I didn't think of it again until my McAfee software detected a potential problem, and it was mygamesonline.org. What is going on? Why do Facebook and McAfee think that subdomain is malicious? Where else can I host my site files for free on a site that is trusted?

Thanks for helping.

posted by hworth to computers & internet (7 answers total)

[Removed the link, please put it in your profile if you want people to look at it, thanks.]
posted by jessamyn at 4:31 PM on May 9, 2012

If your web site is just static HTML and you have little traffic, you can host it on Amazon S3 for a few dollars per year. It looks like the first year is free at the moment.

Though note that because Amazon charges for bandwidth instead of a monthly fee and is extremely robust, if you were to get a huge spike in traffic, whereas a free web host would just go down a site hosted on Amazon will stay up and rack up fees.
posted by XMLicious at 5:12 PM on May 9, 2012

Nearlyfreespeech.net is not free but IS nearly free. I have a site hosted there for which I paid about $5 and have had more than three years hosting for that.
posted by anadem at 5:18 PM on May 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

Google Sites is free.
posted by COD at 5:43 PM on May 9, 2012

Github pages is free, but honestly you should pony up a few dollars a year and go with Nearly Free Speech.
posted by 23 at 5:55 PM on May 9, 2012

Nobody is especially answering the second part of your question, wrt why it's considered malicious.

Free sites have to have a market strategy, and that market strategy can be clean or nefarious. First off, if it's completely free (Even cheap is a HUGE barrier to spammers/scammers) then it's an instant haven for malicious (or illegal) content. It's not hard to get a free bit of webspace somewhere, buy a domain name to redirect to it, obfuscate the address bar and make it LOOK like a different site to steal login info. Think Bank of America or Chase, etc. Next, if you have any ability to run any scripts on that site, it can be used for linkbaiting or even pixel tracking in spam emails, steganographic kiddy porn, etc. Ugly stuff. That's all just USER content.

Provider content can do a lot of nasty stuff, from loading semi-hostile java without you knowing, which can do stuff like make an ad provider count views or clicks that never happen, or that install tracking cookies or software for targeted ads, or even hotlinking to stolen content. All of this is bad, and it's really just the tip of the iceberg.

Most probably it's malicious user content and the IP's or referral url's are simply blacklisted.

I've recommended NFS before, but honestly I HATE their interface. SO AWFUL.

I've personally just switched from A Small Orange (who is AWESOME, I mean AWESOME, but not entirely cheap for what you get) to Namecheap, since NC is where I keep all my domain names. For 1/2 the money I have 10x the space and bandwidth.

Actually, and mod feel free to delete this if necessary, as long as you don't need your own cpanel, I'll give you some space and bandwidth on my account, depending on what you're looking for. Honestly though, namecheap's small accounts are tremendously cheap and it's SO VERY WORTH IT to have your own place and true access to server resources. You can even use non-public folders for personal backup, which makes it extra valuable.

(And lastly, as long as you use less than 2gb of bandwidth a day, you can host a website from your dropbox account---you just don't get any scripting resources and it has to all be static.)
posted by TomMelee at 7:20 PM on May 9, 2012

Take nearlyfreespeach.

Hostgator is also good but costs you 5 dollar p.m. or something.

If it has to be free, try http://byethost.com/
posted by yoyo_nyc at 5:47 AM on May 10, 2012