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December 14, 2006
Safari | Bug Me Not
Have you ever found yourself following a link from an article on the web to another site, only to find that when you got there, you had to fill out several pages of registration forms just to read the article?
If you're like me, you probably pounded your fist on the table and cried, "The internet is not supposed to be like this! It's a communication medium. Why won't you people communicate? Why should a person have to fill out a lengthy profile including name, age, sex, address, occupation, income, phone number, and so on, simply to read a newspaper article on a site that one may never return to again?"
Sometimes it seems like it would be easier to clear immigration at JFK and buy The New York Times than to actually register at the site. Immigration is less nosy.
Here are 3 good options for dealing with unwanted registrations.
Denial
If you aren't too annoyed, you can rewind to the point before you clicked the link. Pretend it doesn't exist. Life is too short. Nothing to see, move along.
Junk Registrations
If you really want to read the article, and you are very annoyed, you can get revenge and ameliorate your anger by registering and providing junk data. This is a popular tactic that can actually be fun once you get into the swing of it.
Make up a fictional person. Give them an interesting life. I used to be a female doctor of 52 who made gobs and gobs of money living and working in Qatar. Aside from the simple pleasures of inventing people, you protect your identity, and devalue the registration database, which is liable to be sold on to other businesses. By protecting your identity, you can expect to get less spam. And you can take heart in knowing that there are tens of thousands of other people like you, using junk registrations to chip away at the notion that forcing visitors through invasive registration processes is a good idea.
Bug Me Not
Get smart and go to BugMeNot to get the log in details for the site you want to visit. When you get to BugMeNot:
- Copy (APPLE+c) and paste (APPLE+v), or type in the domain name for the site you want a log in account for - for example, "nytimes.com" - then click the "Get Logins" button.
- Copy and paste a log in name and password from the listed results.
- Switch back to the site you want to log into, and provide the name and password where required. If the site gives you the option, tell it to remember you.
If it will remember you, you can now visit the site in the future without having to go through this process again. Otherwise, it's probably easier to go back to BugMeNot than it is to store and retrieve the password. I like to think of BugMeNot as the place I store my passwords for sites I rarely visit.
Posted by Brad at December 14, 2006 01:01 PM
