News Site Mandatory Registration
August 21st, 2004
Many news sites are requiring registration to read news articles on their sites. This registration doesn’t cost anything but your personal information. Some people, like myself, don’t want to give that information away. A service called BugMeNot popped up that gives you a username and password that you can enter into the site without having to go in and enter all the information. You skip the registration but the information they have about you, the reader, is bogus.
This is bad for the news site since they use that information to target advertising to their readers. Why should I care about that, I got to read the news article?
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It’s *mandatory*. Not manitory.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free web site.
“It’s *mandatory*. Not manitory.”i> ah well, its stuck like that for now.
I too find all of this data collection annoying and invasive. But I always wondered how long all of these “free” news websites would continue. Let’s face it, most of these publications are paying top dollar for webmasters and technicians, and they have to recoup the money somehow. In which case, I just find reading their web sites too annoying. I still prefer hard copy, and mostly use the online sources for linking to. In the end, it will be their loss, because I think most people will just stop visiting their sites; they will still be paying top dollar for slick sites, but no one will be looking at them.
This is fantastic!! I hate having to register just to read some news!! Thanks for the tip!