If you watch the
Free Bitcoin Sites thread you can stay updated on what sites are working
and what ones may be down for various reasons. These sites are verified before being
added to the list and are checked everyday by me and other followers of the thread.
Being on this site there is the additional safety of the thread being watched by the
moderators.
By following the Free Bitcoin Sites thread one can read the frequent comments about the
experiences others have had with these sites, making it easy - if one doesn't have a lot
of time to devote to checking all the sites out - to determine which ones are worth a visit
and which ones might be a waste of time.
Many of these free BTC site's owners/operators follow the thread as well and will post
themselves when there is something to report about their site. If one has an issue
with any of these sites, or one wants to contact a particular sites owner/operator,
one can ask in the thread to try and get an answer... with some of these sites
this might be the only way of contact.
Beware of copy-cat threads and web pages, who don't take care to check or maintain
their listings and often have dubious sites/links ( sometimes hidden behind url-shortener links...
i.e. you can't be sure what site you are actually going to when you click on their links. )
There are very many sites that have their own lists of free bitcoin sites, but many of them
are scams and are more interested in helping themselves than in helping newbies to get
started in the world of Bitcoin.
The link to the Free Bitcoin Sites thread is in my sig.
The newbie version of the thread can be found here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90718