How do you handle news site registrations?

Post by **R00k** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:00 pm

As a poll. I know this may not be the most representative audience, since everybody here is pretty tech-savvy, but I wanted to get an idea of how people react to online news sites that require registration.

I didn't necessarily want to attach a real poll to this, since there are a lot of possible answers.

So if you've been visiting a news site off and on for quite a while, and they decided to start requiring registration (zip code, age and gender plus email address) in order to read stories - what do you do? Stop visiting? Sign up and continue visiting? Sign up with a fake email address and/or fake information? Use BugMeNot and forget about it?

Our company is going to begin requiring registration by the end of this month, and I'm curious.

Post by **Dave** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:02 pm

I stop visiting.. I don't give my phone number at bestbuy either.

Oh, and with the school online paper I just disable javascript to get around the nag

Post by **4days** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:07 pm

use junk data and a hotmail addy to create an account - and unless there's some valid reason for registering (e.g. being able to comment on articles), will create a handful of accounts for bugmenot.

Post by **bitWISE** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:19 pm

If there is an article that doesn't require a sign-in somewhere else I will just read it. If not and the article isn't important to me I just ignore the whole issue. If I actually care to read it I'll use bugmenot.

Post by **horton** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:28 pm

I think Ive only registered for one site http://www.evo.co.uk the only reason being that I get to read articles from the magazine i used to read in UK and that now if i wanted to buy in Japan I would have to pay about 3 times the UK price

I certainly wouldnt register for something that another site offers without me handing over my details.

I have the spare e-mail accts, i just cant be fucked with the extra bullshit.

Post by **eepberries** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:32 pm

If I can't find an account on bugmenot, I don't bother

Post by **Deathshroud** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:46 pm

eepberries wrote:If I can't find an account on bugmenot, I don't bother

Post by **PhoeniX** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:54 pm

Handy extension for firefox: Bugmenot extension

right click a login prompt > login with bugmenot.

Post by **ppp** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:15 pm

go elsewhere

Post by **Canis** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:18 pm

I use generic information to get behind all that info....Joe Blow who lives in San Francisco with one of the SF zip codes and an AOL account of JB@aol.com. Some variation of this usually gets me by. Otherwise, I have a BS yahoo email account where I send all the registration information for sites I dont find important.

Post by **Fender** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 7:55 pm

I stop visiting. If I really like the site, I might bother with bugmenot, but more often than not, I simply stop visiting.

Post by **Dr_Watson** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:37 pm

PhoeniX wrote:Handy extension for firefox: Bugmenot extension

right click a login prompt > login with bugmenot.

reminds me of the javascript bookmarklet i made for opera ages ago.

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 4:19 am

netvibes or newshutch

Post by **rep** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 4:19 am

WTF... News sites???????

RSS, idiots.