Sometimes people still manage to amaze me. Did other Brinellers with a site
hosted at GeoCities receive this as well? (Yeah, you probably did.)
At 21:11 6-9-01 -0700, GeoCities wrote:
>Dear GeoCities Member:
>
>Congratulations, http://www.geocities.com/jeroenvb.geo is
>very popular and has been receiving a large amount of traffic. Your
>site has become so popular, in fact, that our records indicate that
>you're using more than the allotted amount of data transfer we provide
>for a free web site, which is 3GB/month (measured on an hourly basis).
I was not aware that my website was *that* popular! Oddly enough, the hits
counter I set up is not aware of it either...
When I did some checking, the following numbers came up:
- Total number of hits: 1,047 since June 6, 1999
- Average number of hits: ~1.3 hits per day
- Size of website: 10.6 MB
Now, if each and every visitor would have copied the entire site, that
would have generated ~11 GB of data transfer over a 27 months period, or
~0.4 GB per month. Take into account that it is extremely unlikely that
every visitor copies the entire site, and you are left with the burning
question of how my site managed to get >3 GB/month in data transfers. (Or:
how does my counter manage to miss most of the hits?)
Calculating the other way around: 3 GB/month equals 290 people per month
(9.5 hits per day) copying the entire site. That is 7.3 times more hits
than my counter notices. I will accept that there may be some margin for
error, but this is, well, ridiculous...
Of course, it all made a lot more sense when I got to the next two paragraphs:
>In the past we have not enforced that limit, so your site has been
>uneffected thus far. However, shortly, all free member sites
>transferring more than the allowable data limit will be disabled
>for portions of the day until usage falls to within the prescribed
>limits.
>
>If you'd like to prevent this from happening to your site, you
>may join one of our new premium services, GeoCities Pro or GeoCities
>Webmaster.
Services that go for USD 8.95 and USD 11.95 per month...
I sent them a mail, asking for the data on which they base their claim. I
wonder if they will send it... (Nah, they probably will not.)
Is this even legal? I mean, their message tries to sell you something,
based on obviously false information. Where I come from, it is called
"misleading advertising", for which a company can get some hefty fines.
Jeroen
_________________________________________________________________________
Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://go.to/brin-l
