ReachCustomersOnline.com

Complaints Over Online Newspaper Registration

Posted by TimSlavin at June 15, 2004

"Imagine if a trip to the corner newsstand required handing over your name, address, age, and income to the cashier before you could pick up the daily newspaper.

That's close to the experience of many online readers, who must complete registration forms with various kinds of personal data before seeing their virtual newspaper."

Good discussion, from CNN.com, about issues around free access and registration for news websites. Personally, I usually lie in obvious ways that should tip off anyone looking at the database that my data record is useless: I say that I'm a woman, born 1901, heavy smoker, and so on.

The most interesting part of the article, though, is near the bottom. There is a website called BugMeNot.com that shares registrations across news websites with anyone who visits their website. BugMeNot claims to have "liberated" over 4,000 websites that require registration.

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