There is now a name for those irritating Web ads that pop up unexpectedly when you're surfing. Flab. And highly appropriate it is too. Flab stands for Forced Link Advertising Banners – they lurk within some free Web sites and are almost as much of a nuisance as spam. But help is at hand, according to free.prohosting.com. It says that it has declared war on these cyber love handles by introducing a genuinely free site hosting service. Companies like Geocities and Tripod offer free hosting services provided that you allow pop up advertising to be linked to your site. "People hate coming across Web sites with the irritating pop-up banners and ads," says Bryan Crimin, president of free.prohosting.com. "Our research indicates that a Web surfer who happens on to such a site will likely close the offending pop-up window as quickly as possible and retreat to friendlier domains." Although the company's service is free, and without advertising obligations, they are not doing it purely out of the goodness of their skinny little hearts. Crimin hopes that news of the service will be spread by word of mouth by Netheads who dislike advertising. Then, Crimin says: ".. as they graduate on to bigger and better things (and Web sites) we hope that they will consider virtual domain hosting with our parent company, ProHosting." Now we understand. ®