The term and it's underlying concepts are important to remember while you are enjoying yourself on the internet. There is so much free stuff available that sometimes you forget that very little of it is really free. Someone has to pay the bills, after all.

Let me back up a minute and state that there are things that are free all over the internet. Really and truly free. Some programmers will write software and give it away as freeware. This is often done with noble sentiments, or with more commercial desires such as advertising their skills as programmers.

Other people create websites which contain information and entertainment which is freely available to everyone. In fact, Internet Tips And Secrets is itself one of these websites ... anyone may read the articles at any time without expectation of any exchange of compensation. Our goal is very spiritual, in that we feel that all people should contribute to society in order to aid others in improving their lives.

However, when you are referring to corporations, there is virtually always a need to make money somehow. This should be very obvious, as very few employees will work for free, and most employers will not pay their employees out of their own pockets (or credit cards for that matter).

So how does, say, Yahoo actually earn a living? The company appears to be very noble, giving away tons of services and features for absolutely no cost. You can create or join a webring, send messages to egroups, join a club, maintain a calendar, check movie listings and perform literally hundreds of other tasks without sending them a dime.

What Yahoo and other companies like it want from you is your demographics. They need to know how much money you make, what your interests are, where you live, your sex and age and other similar information. They put this all together into a profile. Included in this profile may be other information such as what webrings and egroups you have joined and what you have purchased online, which will further identify you, your spending habits and your surfing desires.

This information is then boiled down into a statistic and sold to advertisers. Let's say you are selling women's shoes, and your target audience is women over 40 and their husbands, and you know that people who make between $50,000 and $75,000 tend to make larger purchases. You can tell this to Yahoo, and they will send your advertisement to precisely that market.

There are many other examples of TANSTAAFL throughout the internet. In fact, you don't have to try very hard at all to find them, as one of the major business models of internet commerce is giving free stuff to surfers in exchange for viewing advertisements. This is one of the reasons that the internet is facing a small downturn at the moment - people are getting tired of viewing advertisements. As more and more surfers become unwilling to pay the price (viewing and clicking upon ads), more and more companies begin making less money than they expected from advertisers.

So what's the point of all this? It's important to be aware of what you are paying for the service or product that you are receiving. That way you can make an intelligent decision as to whether or not you want to be part of the transaction. Otherwise, you are at the hostage of the company with which you are doing business.

You can begin by reading the terms and conditions of the service before you sign up. You also need to read them again occasionally, and they will almost always change once in a while, and usually they do not change for your benefit (actually, never have I seen them change for the users benefit). You don't need to put up with these changes ... you can protest and possibly get the changed or you can find another service.

Once you've read the terms and conditions, I usually look for the company in search engines to see how many people have comments. You will almost always find a few, as no service can please everyone. However, you should find a good balance between good and bad comments, and you certainly should not find anything about them in the Better Business Bureau or similar organizations. You should also be wary if you start finding large numbers of lawsuits, especially class action suits.

Another good place to look is in the promotional materials for the stockholders. This is the place where they explain to investors why they should be investing in their company. This often tells you exactly how the company makes money, and it can often produce some very eye opening results.

Press releases are also good places to find information, as are privacy notices. Keep in mind that privacy notices can be changed, and there is some debate about their enforceability. These are statements of intent, not legally binding contracts.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, and you may not want to do it all for every single little free service that you get. However, let's say you are using free web space from a provider. You put in lots of time and effort, only to find out that according to their terms and conditions they own the web site that you just created! Wouldn't that really annoy you, especially if they tried to enforce it?

The point is simple - rarely is there ever a free lunch that is honestly and completely free. It's a good idea to look around and be sure that the lunch does not have string attached before you eat it.