According to this site, only a few free ISP’s are left. http://www.addlebrain.com/freeinternetaccess/services/index.html
They just list NetZero, Juno, BlueLight, and DotNow!
Can that be right? Anyone know of others?
BlueLight and DotNow! are both asking for a credit card before you can sign on for “free” service. Somehow I don’t trust that at all.
ntlworld works free in the U.K., (although that may not interest you very much, admittedly!)
Yep, that’s right. One of the companies that was providing the access numbers for a good chunk of the former free ISPs went under, so alot of them disappeared.
NetZero and Juno both have decided that you’re free online time is limited. I think NetZero’s is 40 hours a month. Juno has started selling your computer power -the way we voluntarily let SETI use it. (There was a fairly recent thread about this but I’m too tired to look it up). They also kick you offline during peak hours in favor of their paying customers once you hit a certain number of usuage hours, or that’s what the notice I recall getting when I was still using it as a back up said.
Here’s one in NYC that still works. MetConnect is free, untimed, and does not throw ads at you. Unfortunately, you cannot reach them by dialing long-distance.
As Arden Ranger already mentioned, NetZero, which is what I’ve used for a few years, is now limited to forty hours a month. I went to the AT&T plan for five dollars a month. I still have NetZero, which is what I’ve used when AT&T’s phone lines are listed as busy. [HEY, it’s your lines, knock a few people off, who are just gossiping!!]
Though, NetZero is still running commericals down here in Georgia saying they are still ‘FREE’, it’s now with an asterik. Pretty soon, it’ll be small print, like car ads. 
I also switched to the ATT $5 service. It still has an adbar but it’s enough of a savings that I don’t mind. I had to delete NetZero because they wouldn’t work together right, but I haven’t had any kickoffs or busy signals on ATT yet.
I have never payed for an ISP. Ever. I live in Suffolk County, NY, and the county library system runs a free ISP service. It disconnects you after 90 minutes, but you can reconnect immediately. I rarely have a problem connecting.
I had been using Juno as a backup ISP, but I am unable to connect to their service at all. I get a message that my username could not be authenticated, even after creating a completely new account. I recently installed BlueLight, which did not ask me for a credit card, but did add an annoying Yahoo taskbar to IE, which I cannot figure out how to get rid of.
I completely forgot about College Club when I posted before. It’s free and yes, it’s meant for college students, but it’s not like they check or anything.
I also use BlueLight as a backup ISP. That taskbar annoyed me too, and I was able to remove it, but all I remember is that I uninstalled it via control panel/add-remove programs.
The Computer Gripes site had this to say:
as we speak, I’m using Funcow… AFAIK, it’s a Canadian ISP, but it’s the best I’ve found, that hasn’t gone belly-up.
Glenoled
I went to that site and couldn’t find it. Are you sure they still do that? Would you maybe have saved a favorites link to that site?