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BugMeNot.com Lets Users Circumvent Forced Registration
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Get bent
Posted by �� ! 7/7/2004 5:49:37 PM

I used a BugMeNot pass to log in here. I just saved 1 minute of my life, thanks BugMeNot.

Email Address
Posted by don Hart 6/25/2004 9:43:41 AM

In answer to the question about the complexity of the address yes it was 60 random characters.

In response to the observations about the validity of the emails they claim I would have to agree that they most likely have a much higher fake address rate. There is no real way to check the validity of an email. Due to the high amount of spam being sent every day and the number of spoofed return addresses many companies (including mine) have stopped sending non delivery reports. This means even if you send to a invalid email you will get no response back from the server saying your email mail was bounced.

About thier claims of the number of unique visitors that is most likely generated by a web statistics product like webtrends or livestats. This may or may not be accurate depending on how they determine a unique visitor and if anything it is most likely low. But number is just the people that go to a page on thier site and has no bearing on how many of them get past the home page or actually read anything.

Honshu Noidon
Posted by �� ! 6/22/2004 4:54:29 PM

Look how many Honshu Noidons are posting here.

RE: Lets talk about stealing
Posted by �� ! 6/22/2004 4:52:44 PM

quote:

I have done several tests for my own enlightenment with some of these so called legitmate companies including the NY Times. Since I am the network engineer for the company I can create any email address at our domain I like. So I created a special email address that was complicated enough not to be stumbled upon by brute force mass mailers and used it just for registration on the NY Times web site specifically making sure I informed them through thier form that I did not want to recieve email from either them or any of thier affiliates. I then sat back and waited. Within one week I was recieving daily spam.

------

Are you sure that the email was random enough not to be stubled upon by brute force mass mailers?

I ask because I gave out an email address to the NYT and didn't receive any SPAM at all. Acutally, I never receive SPAM, even though I've given out my address to numerous companies. However, all the companies have one thing in common: they are well-established ones who have a reputation to lose, and I don't think they could afford having their customers annoyed because of SPAM originating from them.

arms race indeed...
Posted by �� ! 6/21/2004 10:12:49 AM

Robert Spears claiming it's morally wrong to give false information to sites requiring registration is like me saying it's morally wrong to limit access to socially generated knowledge. Obviously both are in some respect "right", but equally obvious is that in this case the claims are in contradiction.

So instead of a moral issue, the issue here is of conflicting interests. And I for one will be looking out for mine. I'm pretty sure the NYTimes won't be.

I think I may be on to something here...
Posted by �� ! 6/18/2004 9:54:01 PM

I'm starting to smell a rat with newspaper sites adopting forced user registration. The whole point of this annoying practice is to strut this demographic data in front of potential advertisers.

A recent article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/06/14/newspapers.online.ap/index.html

Has stated that "about 10 percent to 15 percent of the 300,000 registrations to date have bad e-mail addresses, said Fred Mann, general manager of Philly.com".

Now as a professional web developer of over 5 years I know there is simply no good way of verifying an email exists other than sending one of those "click here to activate your accounts" type emails which the Philly DOES NOT DO. If it was possible then spammers would have a field day seeking out new addresses. Don't take my word for it though- go here and check an address such as "sadfasdf@asdf.com":
http://coveryourasp.com/ValidateEmail.asp

So what this means is that 10-15% are really, really obviously fake email addresses. If you added to this figure addresses that *seem* real, addresses at throwaway services such as Mailinator and SpamGourmet and registrations that use real addresses but fake other information then pretty soon I reckon you'd have to say that more like at least 50% of registrations are flawed.

A bit more scratching around revealed this media kit for potential advertisers:
http://mediakit.philly.com/MediaKit.PDF

Check out some of these statistics they're claiming:
- 1.5 million unique visitors per month (but according to the AP article they only have 300,000 registered users... does that mean only 1 in 5 of those visitors can actually use the site??)
- 36.9% of their users are earning 75k+
- 41% will pay 30k+ for their next automobile

Hmmmm...

Lets talk about stealing
Posted by don Hart 6/18/2004 6:17:30 PM

It has been mentioned several times by the proponets of online registration forms for non-paying sites that is not providing correct information in the forms (including a valid email) is theft fro the site.

I would like to look at the theft on the other side of the coin. I am now speaking as a network engineer and administrator. The comapnies that sell or use the information provided in the forms for the sending of unsolicited bluk email (SPAM) are guilty of theft by this action. They are stealing bandwitdh and capacity from my company. I work for a small electronic print and publishing company with about 250 people. On a daily basis we recieve over 40k emails of wich 80% are spam. Much of this spam comes from registering with so called legitimate companies. Due to the large volume of spam we have needed to upgrade both our connection to the internet backbone and out mail gateway server and mail server to support the mail load. The direct marketers and the so called legitimate companies the people have registered with did not ask to use our bandwidth in fact they were specifically told not to use it. Therefore they have stolen this service capacity from our company and they are constantly asking us for more information so they can steal more. That is like the mugger asking you to make sure you stop by the ATM before he robs you next time.

I have done several tests for my own enlightenment with some of these so called legitmate companies including the NY Times. Since I am the network engineer for the company I can create any email address at our domain I like. So I created a special email address that was complicated enough not to be stumbled upon by brute force mass mailers and used it just for registration on the NY Times web site specifically making sure I informed them through thier form that I did not want to recieve email from either them or any of thier affiliates. I then sat back and waited. Within one week I was recieving daily spam.

The Point
Posted by �� ! 6/15/2004 10:37:44 PM

In reference to Adam Lasniks examples regarding registrations, I feel he may be missing some of the bigger picture.

You are absolutely right about our choices, but if I'm the one throwing the party, and I told you at the door while asking for your ID that next week you would be receiving mail from me (several pieces per day, actually) regarding future parties, my neighbor regarding his upcoming garage sale, my priest urging you to join his church, my shady brother-in-law who sells male-enhancement products, and of course several mortgage companies I decided to sell my ID list to to help pay for my Mercedes...

would you still want to go into the party?

And if I'm selling you a pineapple, but told you in advance that by checking out my fruit you would automatically be enrolled in the "Fruit of the Month Club" (next month: pomelo! YUM!!)...

would you still want the pineapple?

And finally, anybody who writes anything for the NY Times wants it to be published for all to read because it saves them the hassle of calling up every household in America and reading it to them personally.

So in conclusion, if you want coupons for the kegger, monthly mangoes, or a daily phone call from Paul Krugman, then by all means show ID, pay up, or register.

But for the rest of us who want to be free from an onslaught of undesired marketing schemes, we'll pass.

A few thoughts
Posted by �� ! 6/15/2004 1:12:31 PM

"selfish, amoral behavior of ever hungry, lazy, spoiled-brat users with little respect for laws and behavior requisite for a sustainable information economy."

It's amazing to me how a person can lay such stringent acqusations on people they hardly even know.

I would suggest that many here opt to take a new look at things they view as absolutes. Law is the tyranny of the majority over the minority- laws aren't "moral", they are only moral in the eyes of people who wish to impose their opinions and beliefs upon others, by declaring their opinions "amoral". The company saying "respect IP laws" is the company who has a monitary interest in users "playing by the rules".

"Ultimately their shortsighted practices diminish the value of an open network and give yet another reason to build ever stronger barriers necessary to keep anarchist barbarians out."

Exactly. Economy is an arms race between content providers and users. Users want goods/services, companies want money. The two sides have completely opposite objectives. Just like the current state of information technlogy. As was stated, the internet was created as an open environment for free information. It was not created to support commerce. Commerce was imposed upon the internet, because companies saw that people were highly interested in it. Wherever people find their interests, there is always a company ready and waiting to capitalize on those interests for finatial gain. And so companies moved on to the internet, having no clue that their objectives were in oppositing to the very format of the medium they were communicating on. Which is what created the current renewed interest in companies in throwing around such terms as "intellectual property", "copywrite", and "piracy".

When it comes down to it, data is just ones and zeros. It has no form, no structure, no identity. Mainly because it can be copied, molded, and transformed into something else. How can I/P function in such an environment? It can't.

The point of privacy
Posted by �� ! 6/9/2004 2:44:08 AM

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
-- Ayn Rand, Russian-born American writer, The Fountainhead

In other words, privacy is what protects the individual from the tyranny of the masses.

If every site on the internet required registration than the internet would simply not work.

Hey, looks who brought this up
Posted by �� ! 6/7/2004 8:02:31 AM

"Speaking of real inconvenience, what about all of those sites that require credit cards for content and services? When does BugMeNot.com plan to expand their offerings to include credit card fraud, identify theft, and counterfeiting? These 'services' would seem like a natural extension of their nascent 'business' model."

You think its a logical extention, not anyone else. Maybe Your the one without any morals. Seeing that bugmenot.com is moderated and MAKES SURE that paid sites do not stay in their database, where is your accusation coming from? Don't you just simply hope that they will include paid sites so you could discount their credibility? Maybe before insulting other people and what they do, you should think about yourself first.

It's not stealing; it's sharing.
Posted by mactitan mactitan 6/4/2004 3:06:47 PM

BugMeNot.com is just sharing their username and password. This is media and information not someones bank account.

If BugMeNot.com is not supposed to share the user id and password for a particular site, that is their liability not mine. It's perfectly logical for multiple users to use one user id; I do this at home on my computer, but I don't share my bank account id and password with my family.

If a website wants to restrict the use of id's and passwords, they need to build it into the system: only one user can be logged in at a time. The reason they don't do this is because it disenfrantises the consumer.

If cos. are going to use tech to impede access to info, they need to accept a reasonable amount of fair use. Expecting the average user to read the fine print int 'terms of use' is just stupid, and beyond reasonable expectation. If they can't find a tech. solution that doesn't disenfrantise their customer, then they are obviously being to strict in their usage rights and access technology.

Users *already* do this, for good reason - BugMeNot simply automates it
Posted by sod off 6/4/2004 1:37:49 PM

BugMeNot is simply automating what I do manually anyway -- and what I did on THIS SITE in order to post: submit fake info to avoid being contacted by the site I'm registering with. Separately, I use popup blockers and ad suppressors to hide as much of the marketing crap as I can.

If these things are OK to do manually, there's nothing wrong with automating them. May I lie to you? Why not?

The site asked me to register. It did not specify that I answer truthfully, and I have no obligation to do so -- Robert's 'moral contract' is a BS fantasy. I'm not dealing with a moral entity -- I'm dealing with a corporation that has its own interests to mind, not mine. *I* am the protector of my interests. I don't trust the publisher, regardless of its stated privacy policy, to keep my info confidential or to be moderate in how it markets to me, much less the 'partenrs' with whom it may share my info. So I give it a fake email address.

BugMeNot automates that process.

If I'm watching TV and a commercial comes on, I'm not -- contrary to what the TV execs say -- obligated in any way, moral or otherwise, to watch that commercial. I can turn down the volume, change the channel for 30 secs, go take a pee, whatever. Advertising is a gamble that the publisher made with the advertiser ABOUT me, not WITH me. No-one guaranteed a return on that investment, least of all I.

If you want me to play by rules I didn't participate in making, too bad. You publish information. To help pay for it, you want me to tell you about myself (and probably expect me to be truthful). But in addition to the content I actually want from you, I have to put up with abuse in the form of increasingly-intrusive advertising and marketing. So I lie to you.

You tell me I'm a sneaky thief, and I retort that you're a loudmouth bully. And in addition to the egregious abusers you either snare or drive away, you also bludgeon loyal customers. Great customer relationship you have going there. Hope it work

Some Thoughts
Posted by [User profile deleted] 3/9/2004 4:24:06 AM

First of all I would like to note everyone to read bugmenots page before adding a thread. Because comments like "are they going to add credit card theft" are invalid. Everything is human moderated, the point was not to break pay sites. What they are trying to do is quite valid in the current situation. Sure maybe not ethical, but businesses forcing us to fill out forms so they can market there products to us better is also unethical. Everyone keeps referring to the nytimes as there reference. And maybe the way they use the data they receive is much more moral than most. But you can't argue that these forms are good as you argue that spam is bad (which I can bet you are). How do you think people get your email, through registration forms and bots that troll for email addresses. Ever notice how after you register for a site you suddenly have an inbox full of new emails from companies that you have never heard of, even though the site that you signed up for swears they well only use your contact information in the most confidential way. It�s understandable when practical to have registrations. (Forms to help moderate use, pay sites, ect.) But many sites blatantly use it to get marketing information. What I hope is that this site may not have to stay open for long, and company�s well realize we are sick of this as people to the point that this site was created with a need. Not only that but I wonder if the amount of data polled is actually enough to interpolate an average for what they are trying to find. Its all quite redundant, hopefully companies well realize its time for a change, and even though we have had "fun" being treated like products, we would like it to stop. A median must be found.

Typical
Posted by [User profile deleted] 2/14/2004 8:31:01 PM

> Individuals like you and sites like BugMetNot.com want to DICTATE to others how they should run their legal businesses.

This is a fine example of the same type of thought that motivates the RIAA and all the copyright people to do the things they do these days.

Here is a fact: until the government prevents people from owning any technological devices, which I do not rule out as a possibility, people will always use technology to circumvent things that are in their way. When the computer industry wakes up from its dream and realizes people do not want to give out all their personal information, perhaps they will finally come up with a better way to make friends with their customers instead of alienating the hell out of them.

If the mass media industry ever wakes up from what seems now to be a heavy duty nightmare involving us all, it will realize that people have been screaming as loud as they can that it is not OK to do what they are doing. It is just not as simple as saying, "You are preventing me from running my legal business." What needs to be examined is whether current copyright laws are ethical, and whether the current absence of decent fair use laws is ethical. (Not to mention the monopolies nobody has thought to knock down, like Clear Channel in US radio)

There will be a big change soon. Either Trusted Computing &c. will become a monster and spark a large-scale war between the open-source geeks and the computing and media industry, or these corporations will finally get a clue that the consumers are asking for something different, and the lawmakers will see that they are not representing their constituents and change the laws. And hopefully corporations will see that fighting your consumers is not the way to create loyal consumers!

Back pocket convictions
Posted by Foo Bar 2/9/2004 9:58:02 PM

Robert, as a columnist for PaidContent.org your viewpoint hardly surprises me.

I must admit some of your writing made me laugh out loud at some points; especially your suggestion that Google charge its users:

http://www.paidcontent.org/snd/snd2.html

This part in particular has a special place in my heart:

"I am also hoping that they launch Google Frames, an ad-supported html frame displayed on linked pages (similar to About.com�s frames). Sure, this might be considered unethical or even illegal, but who would complain?".

Who indeed Robert?

This is the very google you descibe as the "black-hole death-star" because it would dare make access to free content easy for consumers:

http://www.paidcontent.org/snd/snd1.html

The only surprise I got from your musings was that someone actually paid you to write this crud; it's like you're a poster boy for the "The National Socialist Online Publishers Movement" or something. In fact I'm going to go look that up on Google right now... that's if I can afford it of course.

The World as Foo's Idea
Posted by Robert Spears 2/9/2004 12:01:54 PM

Foo,

You are confusing technical capabilities for some kind of technical Martial Law, decreed by market-protected academics like Tim Berners-Lee.

By your logic, you would have an inalienable right to access any and all information available via the "network designed for the free and open distribution of information". Please explain to me how the concept of user accounts and passwords came to be in such an open system. If TBL and his followers really believe in such a utopian open system, why is there a need for passwords to persist? (And when is the offline world going to apply the wisdom of TBL's "open philosophy" and start banning door locks, ID checks, and other forms of oppressive, anti-open legislation?)

In an effort to have a truly 'open' discussion, perhaps we should redefine 'open system' as simply: the inalienable right for individuals like Foo, to access any and all information on the Web without ANY contractual or moral obligation.

Nellie,

Again, mandatory registration is not the issue. Individuals like you and sites like BugMetNot.com want to DICTATE to others how they should run their legal businesses.

Before instinctually abetting online outlaws, I recommend that you ponder the following question: does BugMeNot.com have the ethical right to break the NY Times' moral contract of providing content in exchange for truthful registration information?

Links are not pineapples
Posted by Nellie Bly 2/9/2004 8:40:17 AM

Since digital information is being treated here like a hard commodity, let's turn the telescope around.

How would your communities respond if you required everyone who wants to read your newspaper to register? No copies left on the bar, fill out our registration form at the library, no unauthorized sharing.

One man's "stealing the content" is another's "spreading the news" in the interest of an informed citizenry.

Information wants to be free
Posted by Foo Bar 2/9/2004 4:26:14 AM

The NY Times don't want people openly accessing their content? No problem! Don't publish on a network designed for the free and open distribution of information.

If you're throwing a party and asking for ID can I suggest you don't try and do it in middle of a main road on mardi gras day.

Don't like it? Go away.
Posted by Adam Lasnik 2/7/2004 2:19:18 AM

I'm frankly shocked that there's any ambiguity here. You don't like to fill out registration forms? No problem! Don't access NY Times articles. There's no inalienable right to read what you want to read, how you want to read it.

That text is someone's intellectual property. It's being displayed courtesy of the NY Times, using their servers and their bandwidth.

People who complain that registration forms are annoying (some are) or invasive (I suppose), or an affront to hippie counter-culture love-n-peace-it-all-just-wants-to-be free ethos (fer sure!) are missing the point.

If I'm throwing a party and I ask for ID at the door, you have three choices:
- Show ID and enter.
- Don't come in.
- Tresspass.

If I'm selling pineapples for a price you don't like, you have again three choices if you want that fruit:
- Pay up unhappily.
- Go without (or find another fruit vendor whose terms you like better)
- Steal my stuff.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. Yes, sirree, you have three choices with the NY Times content:
- Register and view the articles.
- Don't register and don't view.
- Steal the content.

Pretty straightforward, I think.

(and I would be delighted to see sites like the NY Times swiftly and quickly cancel all the IDs found on bugmenot. Or better yet, redirect those logins to a page that crashes IE heh heh....)

the registration fallacy
Posted by Jim Wilson 2/6/2004 4:53:16 PM

Here's why registration won't ultimately work: because most newspaper websites won't hire anyone to study the mounds of data that will be collected. If the data is not studied, parsed and then boiled down for use by salespeople to help make more money for the site, what GOOD does registration actually do? Very little. Some could argue it lets people get customized weather forecasts or movie showtimes. BIG DEAL. The reason we keep hearing for sites to do registration is to make money. How do you make more money with registration? You have sales people target specific advertisers based on user data. How do you figure out that data? You hire someone to analyze it. Someone please name me one newspaper site that has hired a full-time person (that is what it would take) to do this. PLEASE!!!

Think, Don't Parrot!
Posted by Robert Spears 2/6/2004 4:43:34 PM

Since ethics and moral contracts are the issue (and few people concern themselves with these dying conventions in the networked digital age), the Anonymous Three (Foo, Pointy, and Nellie) are right, I have missed the point.

In my view, the point of this thread is not whether, or how, unrestrictive sites are better than registration sites. The issue is the implications of sites like BugMeNot.com that enable others to break moral contracts by cheating and compromising the practices of legal businesses. In a free market, dissatisfied customers complain, and then take their business elsewhere. For example, they do not steal when they disagree with exorbitant pricing. In short, consumers should not illegally impose change on the legal practices of others, even when the 'liberators' (AKA lawbreakers and their sympathizers) perceive themselves to be intellectually and morally superior to their 'oppressors' (e.g. NY Times and LA Times).

That it is easy for one to deceive, steal, and go undetected in the online world, is not sufficient justification to blissfully ignore common decency that is practiced in the offline world. Relative ethics is just another label for selfish behavior.

Pull, don't push
Posted by Nellie Bly 2/6/2004 10:12:24 AM

Robert, a "sustainable information economy" doesn't involve deliberately limiting the number of people who will see your advertisers' messages.

How smart is it to demand very personal information from readers so you can guess what they want to buy when you could let everybody in and ASK THEM what kind of ads they want to see, and sell ads based on those responses.

What kind of marketing strategy would rather know how much money readers tell you they make rather than what they're in the market for right now?

Your "anarchist barbarians" are your advertisers' lost customers.

Are there any statistics for how many readers follow a link to a story but abandon the registration pages that pop up instead? Would you like to tell your potential advertisers how many potential buyers you drive away?

Welcome all readers in, let them tell you what kind of ads they want to see, and serve them.

Missing the Point, Robert
Posted by Ken Rickard 2/2/2004 3:10:38 PM

Robert-

ID theft and sky is falling logic has no merit here, since the people liable to use this type of service will only do so for sites that do not require financial interaction.

Hence, no one smart enough to use the site will post an Amazon registration.

The next step in the 'arms race,' then would be requiring credit cards to validate before viewing a site, a strategy that puts online publishers on the same plane as the porn industry.

Is that really a path we can go down?

Tim Berners-Lee's Fundamentals
Posted by Vin Crosbie 1/30/2004 6:27:59 PM

Question:
"What fundamental principle [of the Internet] would that be?"

Answers:
"[The] Unconstrained structure of knowledge. ... It all relies on the concept of open access," Tim Berners-Lee's 'Publishing on the Web', keynote speech at the European HyperText Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 1994 (http://www.w3.org/Talks/ECHT94-Keynote/)

"No constraint on topology of information.
Minimal constraint on users." TB-L's guest lecture "WWW Design Decisions in Perspective", MIT, Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 1995 (http://www.w3.org/Talks/9512-6.001/slide2.htm)

"The rules of web behavior are being defined now, by programmers meeting in groups, by lawyers and politicians. They are making decisions.

"For example, one simple principle is end to end confidentiality. What a simple rule, that in cyberspace, privacy should be available between two people irrespective of physical location. ... Other principle is the right to anonymity." TB-L's keynote the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Vannebar Bush's visionary article "As We May Think", MIT, 12 October 1995, (http://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html)

Question:
"What percent of users enter total garbage? Far less than one percent. An irrelevant number. Not an issue.

Answer:
Odyssey President Nick Donatello told a UC/Berkley Graduate School of Journalism that his firm's objective research shows that about 27 percent of people intentionally falsify registration data.

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