Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Privacy: how to read the news without the personal questions
When you look up a news story and get slapped with one of those "registration required" messages, there's a way to log in with someone else's information.
A site called BugMeNot lets you type in the Web address of some place that wants you to tell them personal information, and get back a username/password that another BugMeNot user set up.
The Mozilla browser even has an optional extension you can download that does all the work for you.
It doesn't always work: some newspapers have discovered that BugMeNot exists and they're deploying technical countermeasures.
Is it ethical, though? When you use BugMeNot, are you "protecting your privacy" or are you "stealing a free newspaper"?
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A site called BugMeNot lets you type in the Web address of some place that wants you to tell them personal information, and get back a username/password that another BugMeNot user set up.
The Mozilla browser even has an optional extension you can download that does all the work for you.
It doesn't always work: some newspapers have discovered that BugMeNot exists and they're deploying technical countermeasures.
Is it ethical, though? When you use BugMeNot, are you "protecting your privacy" or are you "stealing a free newspaper"?
# posted by Frederick @ 6:29 AM Email to a friend:
Haloscan: they provide trackback