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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Never understood why people use it seems to be too risky.

You can end up sharing an account with someone associated with some unsavory activity and end up having to explain it.

Plus many sites allow users to view their login and download activity logs which means your private information can leak that way.

Sure VPNs and TORs can help mitigate some of that risk but BMN isn’t for opsec it’s for continence if you already are taking extra steps for opsec you might as well use disposable email addresses for your disposable accounts.

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I only ever used it to access things that should not have been behind a user account in the first place. It was really just an opt out for the forced "sign up for our newsletter/spam to download our app" type paths. The only thing it'd really leak is that someone with a particular IP had used bugmenot... Which many would likely consider an advantage over going through creating an account and potentially getting spammed.

I rely on email proxy for most stuff nowadays, so when I register an account I can at least temporarily disable the address used for this particular service if it gets too spammy.

Combined with a password manager it's mostly the only way to stay sane online.

It doesn’t matter you use it to access a news article someone else uses it to issue a death threat as a joke or do something worse your IP is tagged on the same account and someone might come knocking.

Law enforcement isn’t even likely to know that the account is on BMN or even what it is. And what’s worse is if the rest of the IPs are foreign but you are local well congrats you’ve now become the focus simply for being within reach.

That sure is a bunch of fearmongery. With how mobile everyone is these days an account can be logged into by hundreds of IPs, including residential IPs like friends and family. It's not a very significant data point for law enforcement unless they can find any actual dirt through that.

You typically don't put in any information in these systems.

It is mainly to combat download links that require you to create an account etc.

I really don't see any risk if you use it for stuff like that. And they'd have to really put in an effort to even find you.

I created several BugMeNot accounts over the years without any issues. I guess if any of them got used for unsavory stuff it would be pretty clear from the logs that the account was shared.

Throwaway email addresses were not a thing.

Spam laws were not there.

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