Bug Me Not
Tired of having to fill out forms, sometimes with very personal data, every time you want to read a newspaper article? Having to go through the process of checking your email, activating your account, then having the newspaper sell your info to spammers so your email box can get even more clogged up? These signup pages are appearing everywhere, and each news service has a different one, so you wind up having to subscribe to dozens of different sites–or, like me, just a few (LA TImes, Chicago Trib, NYT), and then just give up and ignore the others.
Try Bug Me Not, a web site designed to help you get past those signup pages. Go to the site, type in the URL of the newspaper you can’t get into, and they give you a login name and password to get into the site. Extensions for Mozilla/Firefox are available, allowing you to right-click on a subscription page and be given a name and password immediately in a pop-up box.