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)
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 44.7 ms ] threadThen, 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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.