This site was created to allow you to "bypass compulsory web registration."
It claims "10,828 sites liberated."
It allows you to click on "add another fuck you."
Its motto at the bottom of its home page is, "Take back the web."
To be honest, it's too technical for me, but I'm sure you'll understand it and find it useful.
Here's the FAQ page from bugmenot:
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Frequently Asked Questions
What's this all about then?
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times).
Why not just register?
It's a breach of privacy.
Sites don't have a great track record with the whole spam thing.
It's contrary to the fundamental spirit of the net. Just ask Google.
It's pointless due to the significant percentage of users who enter fake demographic details anyway.
It's a waste of time.
It's annoying as hell.
Imagine if every site required registration to access content.
Is it ethically justifiable to do this?
You'll have to find your own way there my friend. However, there is an interesting discussion happening over here.
Are you going to steal my identity or rob my credit card?
No. Our policy forbids accounts to paid services from being posted. However, just like a discussion forum, if you happen to find one then email and it will be removed. Privacy is not considered a commodity.
Are you going to bankrupt my paid content service?
See above. If you are losing sleep over this then email the url and we'll add your site to the "automatically blocked" list.
How do I use this thing?
Search for logins by pasting the entire url or just the domain name (e.g. www.foobar.com). You do not need to register to use BugMeNot.com. The system will ask you to provide a fresh login for a site if appropriate. This is optional and will not reveal anything additional. This is how new accounts are added to BugMeNot.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
I don't mind registering for sites which actually provide some customizable use which I read at least once a week (nytimes.com for example, or guardian.co.uk).
Where I find bugmenot most useful is to read one-off articles linked from aggregator sites, such as Romensko, TVbarn, Metafilter, etc. where the chances of me coming back to the site again are very low. More and more of the paper chains in the States are making registration across the board, so registering with dozens of sites to read one article is just a waste of my time.
And thanks to bugmenot, I no longer pretend to live in LA, since in the early days, newspaper registrations only accepted ZIP codes, and the only one I know is 90210, and I live at 742 Evergreen Terrace.