Today I spent a couple hours removing trojans and spyware from my parents' PC. The spyware infections seemed to coincide with my mom deciding to switch ISPs to PeoplePC. After doing some research, I found that PeoplePC has a background process that launches a lot of popup windows, and I'm guessing that at some point one of my parents accidentally clicked "yes" to install some ActiveX control or something, which in turn led to the influx of spyware and trojans.

Anywho, PeoplePC is now cancelled, and I'd like to find a good, cheap, no-frills replacement. Just a steady connection with no banner ads, no spyware, etc. Things like web space, lots of email accounts, etc. aren't important. After just a bit of searching, ISP.com seems reasonable, and I haven't been able to find any tales of them using banner ads or anything like that. Anyone have any other suggestions? ISP.com's base dialup package is $8.95, their "high speed" is $12.95 but from what I understand the "high speed dialup" stuff is a bunch of crap.

So, any suggestions?

I was signed up with Access4less.net for about a year before I gave in and got cable - would have prefered the cheaper DSL.
All I got from them was a phone number, username and password, and all they got from me was $5.95* a month.
When I went to cancel, I just sent them an e-mail and they confirmed is later that day - no hard sell, just a thanks for using their service.

*$4.95 seems to their current sign up offer price, but there is a $8 sign up fee, I don't recall if I paid one.

Hmm, seems good. No free support, but the 'rents just call me for 24/7 support anyway.

Yes, That's correct. I run an ISP, and we filter a few ports plus a few flooding-attacks. If a customer complains about this, we open up their IP address and let them suffer the problems themselves.

Marius (Escort Cab/MarkII + Sierra Estate/Mark IIb)

Is it just me, or did anyone else immediately think of the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie flash?

So, I'm digging up this old thread because, much to my dismay. Access4less. who has provided my parents with cheap ($5/mo) hassle-free, ad-free dialup access, has been bought out by Earthlink. They're "kind" enough to give me the opportunity to stay with the same email address for $9.95/mo, but my hatred of Earthlink (the Wal*Mart of the Internet) will not allow me to do that.

So, if anyone out there knows of any other ISPs that fit the original requirements, at around the $5/mo price point, let me know. Access4less sure was great while it lasted...

Looks like a good list of cheapness:
http://www.freedomlist.com/find.php3?cheap_dialup_national=166

Thanks. Reading the comments, it appears a lot of access4less folks are landing on one of the ones on that page. I'll follow the reviews for a couple weeks before deciding on where to go next.

The deadline to opt out of Access4Less's transformation to the Borg (Earthlink) is in a couple days, so I've switched my mom over to All2Ez. The reviews have been phenomenal, and apparently customer service actually cares how customers like the.. uh... service. We'll see how long that lasts, but for now, this looks like a great option. And, it doubles as a Mother's Day gift, since I completely forgot about it until yesterday.