Judge me not for judging a website by its cover – I loved BugMeNot.com before I even knew what it did.

It’s just such a great name. It’s the type of name that lends itself to being very, very rude without ever using the F-word. It’s the type of name you want to give your neighbours’ kids (okay, sometimes your own kids), or that useless SARS official at the other end of your telephone line. Or that stupid website that won’t let you use it unless you register and give all sorts of personal details, right down to when last you went for a colon irrigation (which gives you the same sort of pain as the pain you get for having to fill out the annoying registration form in the first place). Which, as fate would have it, is exactly what BugMeNot.com can help you with.

To explain, in the web equivalent of a can of Doom’s own words: “You’re browsing the web and you click a link to an article on a site (let’s say nytimes.com) but instead of getting the article you get a screen asking you to login or register. Infuriated at the idea of pointlessly registering for yet another site you turn to your good buddy bugmenot.com…”

BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times). In an effort to “take back the web”, BugMeNot and users have so far created fake logins and passwords for more than 300 000 websites, saving you time, hassle and web-rage.

The long way round to use BugMeNot goes something like this…

STEP 1: Make a note of the website address you’re trying to access.

STEP 2: Visit www.bugmenot.com.

STEP 3: Enter the address from step 1 into the box and press the “Get Logins” button

STEP 4: You should now be presented with at least one username and password, but probably a lot more. Make a note of them.

STEP 5: Go back to the site you were originally trying to access in step 1 and proceed to login with the username and password you noted in the previous step.

Of course, BugMeNot are all about saving you time and hassle, so you can always just drag and drop the bookmarklet provided by them to your Bookmarks toolbar and then just click on that every time you need a login.

You can also help others give the finger by creating fake usernames and passwords for websites you come across that don’t yet have BugMeNots, and submitting them to BugMeNot at http://www.bugmenot.com/submit.php  It’s kind of like giving a bug-spray protected finger to the man.

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