How to obtain logins for websites which require registration | Hacker News Reader

How to obtain logins for websites which require registration

makeuseof.com

15 pointsTasm17 comments

How is this different to bugmenot? In fact, Bugmenot is easier to use because you can use the firefox extension to fill in the username/password fields.

I think not all use their firefox extension. Here I like the cleaner interface

And not all users use FireFox :)

I don't get it either. Bugmenot already has significant mindshare among people who would actually care about / use such a site.

They've decided to fight an uphill battle against an entrenched competitor, who offers an identical service. And aside from a slightly cleaner "professional white" interface, they don't seem to offer anything that Bugmenot doesn't. And BMN has a neat FF plugin, if you want to use it.

Color me confused. They need some compelling features to get users to change, and I'm not seeing any so far.

There was an Spanish-language project for these things called: "Proyecto Lalala" (Lalala project) which encourage users to register accounts with 'lalala' as user and passwords in every crappy website that required user registration and avoid frustration to other users.

Then, if you only need a quick auth to get some info, you just logged in with 'lalala' (or create the user if it wasn't created)

cough bugmenot.com cough

There is no problem for webmasters to find and delete 'lalala' accounts

Also, like qwerty!

It's also no problem to track how many different logins per day an account gets and figure out which are being shared.

And moments after loading the page, it throws a registration request in my face. Ah, irony.

Mildly unethical at the very least, in breach of terms and conditions in the average case, criminal in the worst case (depending on the laws of your country around unauthorised access to computer systems).

This isn't a specific criticism of this site, as such, but rather on all such sites that try to save people time by providing generic logins.

Not that you shouldn't do it. It's just worth thinking about, y'know?

Can you elaborate on the ethical aspect? My first reaction is to favor anonymizing services but I would like to understand both sides of the issue.

In providing a (usually) free service, there is some understanding that you will provide certain genuine information about yourself in exchange for that service, in the form a registration/signup. By using a generic account, you are circumventing this exchange.

Sure, there's a good argument for anonimity, but it's give-and-take in the virtual world. You're basically getting something for nothing and robbing the site owner of their ability to proscribe the means by which new users are given access to the site.

Sorry, but very few websites have the need to have full demographic detail (name, address, dob, etc.) on who I am. I assume many use it to establish demographic profiles for basing advertising rates, or more nefariously, sell off to direct marketers.

Also, that any data I provide about myself is stored in some other persons/companies database, with some unknown level of security, you will never get real information about me unless I have a real sense of trust of the website, and there is an obvious need for the information related to use of the website.

That's fine, but even the ability to link one distinct user to your behaviour on the site may be valuable data for the site.

Well, it's worth understanding that for sites with no obvious need for user accounts (say, washingtonpost.com) the goal is to learn more about the audience so that they can provide aggregate demographics to advertisers and (if they're smart) target the ads to individual users.

So by messing with the accounts, you deprive them of that data. That said, I would assume they're smart enough to see that an account that gets logins from 100s of IPs a day is obviously not one person.

I use a special 'guest' account with the NYT, which is the exact same 'back door' login a friend used to login at University! And I didn't set up the account, just found it by mistake!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com