Slashdot Mirror
Turning Up The Heat On On-Line Registration
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "CNN is running a story on the growing number of print newspapers with on-line editions that are requiring registration. Apparently there are some folks out there who don't like this 'feature'! I found a few things interesting about the story: Privacy groups say it's a dangerous practice and promotes spam; I didn't realize people put real personal info into these things (110-year-old surgeons from Bulgaria named Mickey Mouse). About 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus, a figure that was much lower than I would have thought. Also mentioned in the story is a web site called BugMeNot.com, which lists 'communal' logins and passwords for on-line newspapers."
Haha, wouldn't it be a kicker if someone made a subscription account public so everyone could read the articles from the distant future...
[insert witty comment here]
If you go to BugMeNot.com and enter http://slashdot.org, you get:
;-)
CmdrTaco
password
Sheesh, I'd expect better from him!
...but I imagine that 'joe@aol.com' probably doesn't...
Of course, now that BugMeNot has been publicized, how long until all these sites check that site often and just disable all accounts that ever get listed there?
About 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus
:)
That percentage has just risen
infowants
tobefree
However I got a password error when logging in. I wonder if it was a bad logon, or if this entry was changed prior to running the story here...
I live in Austin. I used to read the Statesman online, but now they require registrations, and the damn thing asks for the password every single time.
So, I read www.kxan.com instead. I think that no matter where I turn, I can find an equivalent article from a competitor. Even content such as what salon.com carries can be found elsewhere. Slate.com and theatlantic.com can give me lots to think about when salon.com's advertisements fail to run on Linux.
So, no biggie. If they make it easy for me, I'm content to set myself up as a 99 year old woman from Ahzerbaijahn. But if they bug me twice about it, or if they fail to test their advertizing/authentication scheme with the browser that I choose to use, then I'll never visit their shithole again.
So long, Austin American Statesman. You suck!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Just a theory, of course, but I bet the newspapers could care less what info. you use to register, as long as you do. And if you register with a new name every time, even better-- that's twice the number of readers they can claim to have to their advertisers.
The day the online LA Times started requiring subscriptions... ...I stopped reading the LA Times online.
...I stopped reading the Washington Post online.
The day the online Washington Post started requiring subscriptions...
Luckily, the NYTimes didn't require a valid email, once upon a time...
There are still enough free sources of news on the Internet-- if some papers want to cut down on their advertising exposure and online circulation, fine. Screw 'em. There is no reason they need my name to send me their news and ads.
... because since I've switched to firefox, I need to remember them again at least once to input (Since I'd been using autologin on most sites for months/years) and I use several variants of my name and passwords depending on the site and the requirements and I forget which I use where.
Hmm.. Looks like this provides assistance for circumventing a mechanism to controlling access of copyrighted material.
They found that 10-15% of email addresses are bogus. This makes perfect sense, because most users who register probably figure that they need to recieve an e-mail to confirm registration, (even if you don't, as in the case of the Philadelphia Inquirer). If you look at Name/address/phone number/other personal info, then the amount of falsified data is probably at 85%+. Of course, there's no way to run a database queue to find out how much of that is fake, since they can't just count bounced e-mails. But to the companies e-mail is really all that matters anyway, so the fact that the other info is fake is moot.
It's more a matter that there is no point them having my details. What do they gain?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I know people who give their email username AND password even when trying to use "send/forward to a friend" links in a newspaper.
That said, I don't think lying is an option for many people.
No sane advertiser will pay for a spot based on research data where such an easily checked piece of data is already proven to be false 1 out of 5 times. Income, job, interest are then likely to have a far higher error rate.
I do know that newspapers have to make money and that giving their content away for free does not make too much sense. But this doesn't make sense either.
If they want to get info let them start with basic geographic data. Don't show someone with a european IP ads for america only products. Surely that shouldn't be that hard?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> It's more a matter that there is no point them having my details. What do they gain?
Mass marketing information. The more personal they can make their "exclusively mailed to the general public" mailings, the better. And, if their customer list is feature (read: information) rich, they can sell it to others for a higher price.
slashdot
slashdot
Works on quite a few sites.
After all these years of filling out fake information in online forms, I'm not really very sure what my own name, address, or social security information is any more.
:)
Maybe that's why the IRS is less than entertained by my tax returns.
Name: John Smith (note the resemblance)
SS#: 078-05-1120
Addr: 1 Main Street
Anytown, USA
Just kidding, I've been sending notes to the IRS for years reminding them I am from a galaxy far far away, and we don't believe in taxes.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Information. Information about their customers: who is reading their stuff, how old they are, how much money they probably make...in other words, information that defines you as a certain type of consumer who spends their money in a certain way.
They call it "Information Poisoning" and are absolutely baffled why on earth anyone would ever practice it. Just for useful reference for other peoples information poisoning efforts I have an easy one to remember
Young America, MN 55555
This will match the zip code to the city and will pass those systems that try to verify against bogus data.
They don't care about the people who refuse to sign up, this is meaningless to them. But if they get enough bogus data, those databases become significantly devalued.
And to whoever has that bob@jones.com email address, I offer my sincerest apologies.
The internet is a huge resource of information, and if people are uncomfortable or feel that their privacy has been infringed by being asked personal information, there are plenty of other sites that carry the same news.
Demographic information is a very valuable resource, but only if accurate information is submitted. But for now, there's no stopping those who value privacy from posting bogus info.
bout 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus, a figure that was much lower than I would have thought.
I thought the same thing, but almost every time i ask a nontech-savvy person, they tell me they put their real info in. Also, many of these people will also put your email in to those 'send this to 5 friends for $1 off!' type deals. I have had to teach everybody in my family that when you do things like this it adds to spam. Some of them seem to think that its wrong to give fake information, or that you may be tracked down or something. people need to be educated about this stuff!
They are not going to be too impressed with marketing data like this. If people can be proven to be lying about one thing in a survey then all the other data is suspect as well.
Compare it with banners ads sold on number of shows, clicks AND sales. The first are insanely high but also easily faked. Clicks are slightly more reliable but any advertiser is really intrestted in the number of sales generated.
So if your site can sell 1 billion views that is barely worth anything. If it can produce 100.000 clicks that might get you a few bucks. But generate 1000 sales and you are golden.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For sites that require a valid email address for registration, there's an excellent site called www.dodgeit.com
You don't need to create an account, just invent one.
Then go to the site and you (and anyone) can look at the mail sent to that address. Go try it out, go to the site, and punch in "ihatespam" for example and you can see all email sent to ihatespam@dodgeit.com
With great timeliness, the Globe and Mail (Canada) just started asking for a registration today. But it seemed to only ask for the polls. So then they also gain email-verified poll results.
The G&M is pretty well-respected, and it seems likely that their web-polls were getting spammed by political operatives, since they've been running many about the upcoming Federal election.
Bogus details is like pirating shareware. It isn't hard, it isn't murder, but it isn't right, either.
Of course, it depends somewhat on what kind of privacy protections your country has, and what data they ask for. I don't like giving out salary data. The G&M only asked for a postal code.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
If only sites like these were hosted on some sort of P2P network where any browser could access it, but the 'site' could distribute load across many hosts (and have differing information -- bad that it's not global and constant, but good that it's not controlled and thus can always exist -- an acceptible trade-off).
It's amazing how many websites already have billg@microsoft.com, info@sco.com darl.mcbride@sco.com and other common addresses already registered as an active user. This usually works for the, "enter your email and we'll spam you before you can proceed" registrations like on Quicktime or Pinnacle Patches or thing like that...
Looks like they broke it, though.. isn't there a new version?
Someone here, a while back, posted a way to "tag" your email addresses, so they'd still be deliverable, but you could tell who was responsible if you started getting spam.
c om
It was something like
user#nytimes@example.com
user%nytimes@example.
where user@example.com is the real address, and something similar to the above would be what you would enter while signing up for a site.
I can't recall what it is, but it would be very useful if anyone can remember.
"We helped the first group through it. We reassured most all of the second group with a strong privacy policy. The third group still doesn't like it and I presume many of them did not register with us," he said.
It seems like everyone likes to say that they have a strong privacy policy, but it is often the case that the claim of a strong privacy policy is just a bunch of reassuring words with no basis in reality (remember Toysmart? And from what I understand, not much has happened regarding attempts to create legislation.). As long as there are no laws in the US that regulate the use of personal data that are comperable to the laws in Europe, these newspapers could pretty much do whatever they want to with the data.
Now fine, I understand that these newspapers need to get advertisers' money in order to survive. But why not be straightforward about it? For example, if they asked readers to do anonymous surveys in order to help their advertisers, they would probably get far more favorable response than this register-all-your-personal-data-so-we-can-lie-to-y ou-about-not-selling-it-to advertisers bullshit they're doing now.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Hmm, that BugMeNot site doesn't seem to work very well. I put in slashdot.org and tried 4 different logins, none of which worked. It's possible it has a problem with people going in and changing the password.
The actual quote was:
The Philadelphia Inquirer started online registration in March, asking readers for e-mail, home address, gender and birth date. About 10 percent to 15 percent of the 300,000 registrations to date have bad e-mail addresses, said Fred Mann, general manager of Philly.com.
Just because an email address will accept mail does not mean the rest of the information is accurate in any way. I have a few junk-dropper email addresses that I'll point these things to in case there is something it might send that I would need (like a password). But the rest of the information can be totally false...
So the real amount of bad data may be closer to the number you were thinking of in the first place (I'd guess 30-40% bogus registrations myself).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
103 year old surgeons? Heh. I forget where, but one website I encountered wouldn't let you enter a birthdate that was 100 years ago or more. I guess my 103 year old grandmother wasn't allowed to view the site.
If you can't get a login/password easy, and need a valid email address to confirm registration, try mailinator.com.
They are email accounts that require no passwords, or even any setting up. They are throw away accounts designed to curb spam.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I should probably mention mailinator.net. Its a handy tool for this sort of thing, but I'm to lazy to explain what it does exactly.
When the latest movie hits the cinemas, you have to pay $10 to $15 (depending on currency) per viewing. If you're prepared to wait six months, you can rent it for $5 and view it a couple of times. If you wait a year, you can get it as a weekly video for less. If you're prepared to wait a couple of years, you can see that same movie for free when it is on TV.
The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, and have no soul-sucking registration to view, but only allow the viewing of articles from non-current newspapers. The online edition would then become a free archive service. People who want today's news can buy today's newspaper, or wait a day or two when it's posted online.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
So if I typed "Mickey Mouse" in my registration details, what sort of information would they get from it? :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Let's not forget that just because an e-mail doesn't bounce doesn't mean that it belongs to the subscriber. I have for years been using the address bob@dole.com when I don't want to give a real address. So if there is somebody named or with the initials bob who works at the Dole fruit company, he gets a ton of spam. But there's a chance that even though I faked the address, it won't bounce, so the number is probably even higher than 10%-15%
... block adverts? They're probably setting up the infastructure to go to a paid-only subscription model in the future, and it's all thanks to selfish bastards who don't want the 'annoyance' of a few ads to keep sites free for everyone else. Sigh.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Poll results certainly sound like a good idea. The Sydney Morning Herald (another of the dozens of sites which are locking down soon) hold polls, and in the past they have been less than reliable (as an example, back in 2000 or 1999 they had a "what do you think of browser cookies" poll, which I answered by using their assumption on the existence of browser cookies to post 1000 votes against cookies.)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
There's also a Firefox plugin that lets you choose "bugmenot" from the context menu. :)
Strange that this should be on slashdot when I only found out about bugmenot.com about a week ago
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Google apparently cuts deals with sites so that Google's crawler can read them, while others can't. Those sites show as "(subscription)" in Google News. If Google took the position that "if we can't get in as a normal user, we won't index it", this "registration" thing would stop.
haven't found one that doesn't yet.
Most the newspapers online I've seen CHARGE you to view non-current articles. It is considered "archival research".
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
http://asdf.com/asdfemail.html
Ow. I'd hate to see their mail inboxes.
When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by how drivers on highways/interstates could be so mean to each other (cutting each other off, flicking each other off, etc...), and yet still occasionally help a brutha' out by flicking their headlights to warn of a sneaky hidden cop.
:)
I've got a bit of hippy in me thanks to a 70s generation mom, so I love to see any example of people banding together to fight annoying corporate trends like login requirements for free content. I previously had not heard of BugMeNot.com, but now I'm going to stick a link up on my site to spread it around a little more - as well as adding the firefox extension.
Of course, I suppose I should disable logins for my site in order to avoid hypocrisy/irony... although that'll seriously cut into my meager revenue...
Web readers get the same content as the paper-and-ink edition without paying for it, it's fair to ask them for personal information in exchange for access.
Either sell the newspaper online or give it away free, but registration sucks. bob@hotmail.com is getting upset with me.
Also, Apple has already demonstrated that if you have something worth paying for, then transactions can be handled at sub dollar amounts. Sell subscriptions online for a buck a month, problem solved.
Advertisers cover the production and distribution costs, $0.25 for the paper is probably about the worth of that much paper, plus the news after it's been sanitized from anything that might alienate the cash cow. So if the e-paper doesn't have the value of the actual paper, that leaves just the value of the news. About $0.03/day sounds about right to me.
Don't laugh, $0.03 is worth a lot more than the information with which I pollute their datasets.
You have to be kidding me. Not my call to make? It is entirely my call to make.
And equating entering incorrect information to piracy is breathtaking in its illogicalness.
If you are worried about giving a valid email adress, just use mailanator.
Could someone who knows the site name exactly post it?
They would get a picture of your mom's ass that you have as a background image on your computer.
Before the cypherpunks list became absurd the in thing to do was set up shared logins on free services with user and password equal to "cypherpunks". It still works some places.
No, how much information they want is not your call to make , it's definitely theirs.
But it is entirely your call whether or not to give that information, or forego the use of their service.
They all know damned well that just becase they ask for information doesn't mean they'll get it. They're also probably aware that their readership will go down proportional to how much information they want, so they make a judgement as to how valuable that information is to them.
You make that same judgement....
Also, the parent was not equating incorrect information with piracy, he was comparing...there is a big difference. His comparison was not entirely without merit. You can choose to ignore the nag screens on Shareware, and continue using it for free, just as you can enter false data in the registration pages of a service, therefore getting it for free. In both cases the providers of the software or the service are aware that this will happen, and are counting on enough people to be honest to make it worthwhile. But being one of the expected dishonest people does not make you any less dishonest....
Advanced users are users too!
I care about it, that's who. Their one article, which will be old in 24 hours, is not adequate compensation for providing them and their advertisers with my personal information, which does not become old. The trade is not a good value, especially since news.google.com can find that exact article or a similar article elsewhere.
Only on
They allied with Telecom and blocking off Telstra-Clear.
How many of you have registered as Ms chokesondick? age 103
I think it is great that different newspapers try different things. It gives us a chance to see what works and what fails.
It seems to me that newspapers lose more for requiring registration than they get from that little bit of demographic information.
Newspapers that require registration end up losing boat loads of traffic from search engines and they tend to lose the valuable backward links for article citations in blogs and what not.
In the long run, of course, the most successful format for online news would be the hybrid model that gives some features for paying, others for free registration and has a good amount of info available for free to build and maintain casual web traffic.
None, which is why putting in disinformation is a good idea!
Intresting that you say that as an AC me thinks i smell hypocrisy.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
That's deep. Well put.
-Rob Ewaschuk
Hm, I don't know. Look at the whole picture: what safeguards are there that all of these businesses actually follow their privacy statements? I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't at least uncomfortably common for companies to sell these lists, thinking "Oh, how will they ever know it was us?" And unless you give a different e-mail address to each registration place and then keep track of where spam is sent to, they're right: you can't know who did it. And besides, everyone on the internet has probably been subjected to abusive and intrusive marketing in some form, such as spam, spyware, pop-ups...
It seems to me that if you expect people to be held to a strict standard of honesty in their relationship with companies involved in marketing, you have to demand that same standard of honesty from the companies. That is a responsibility marketing companies have, imho, not lived up to, and you can't be surprised when people grow suspicious of them.
Another easy one to remember -- I always use:
Beverly Hills, CA 90210.
Even though I hated that show and doubt I have never seen a full episode, it has been very handy for online registrations!
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
But more to the point: you have *exactly* the same trust that they won't sell their info as they have that you won't provide bogus info. You're contributing to the problem of mistrust that you are depending on. While that's not inconsistent, it certainly doesn't make for a better world.
(And finally, at least in Canada, and probably Europe, a company getting caught 'thinking "Oh, how will they ever know it was us?"' would get slaughtered.No, but it only takes one person to do this, and do it quite convincingly. So, whether they think they won't get caught or not, there's a decent chance that they will. What effect that has depends largely on how active your society is at correcting it.Yes, absolutely! But these aren't marketing companies we're talking about, they're newspapers. And I don't know about where you come from, but where I come from newspapers care about hteir reputation. If the G&M sold their web-subscriber list to spammers, there'd be hell to pay.Even if that were true (which I tend to agree with), and relevant (I don't think it is -- see above), it still doesn't give you the unilateral right to change the agreement on the table.
Punish them by not subscribing. Punish them by walking away. The agreement on the table is not unreasonable, and doesn't deserve civil disobedience. Save that for times when the agreement is unreasonable.
If another party has been dishonest, your remedy shouldn't be to be dishonest back, your remedy should be never to deal with them at all costs.. By continuing to deal with them, you give them all sorts of opportunities to continue to fuck with you and others. (For example, even if you're providing bogus data, this dishonest advertising company can turn around and count you as valid data to someone else, and at a cursory examination they'd be right.) Why would you let them do that?
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
I'm sure that i'm not the only one to find that the Miami Herald decided to keep up with the Joneses and required me to register to read Dave Berry articles (and presumably any other content, as if anyone goes to herald.com for anything other than berry).
How long until the national outlets follow queue? CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, hell even ESPN, this is a ridiculous trend, and not for tin-foil hat reasons like most of the morons here spout, this is a matter of convenience and usability. This is a matter of being able to click a link and not be greeted with a page asking for information. How many logins is a user required to maintain? Sure browsers may attempt to manage them, if the username field is called username and the password field is called password (which they arent always labeled), so you can't ever clear your cookies, or change browsers, or computers, or whatever. It's ridiculous.
...people generating the audience know all too well about falsified sales figures. "Oh sorry your 100,000 clicks barely produced sales, here's a nickle for your trouble".
That's why they've mostly agreed on clicks as the "currency" of choice, since both can verify the number of clicks. Then the advertiser can look at his click-to-sales ratio and decide if it's worth it. Of course, this leads to the nefarious practice of redirecting innocents because they generate clicks.
Going by sales is better all around, particularly for the consumer, but it also requires a considerable higher level of trust between the companies involved.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My great grandfather (born in 1894, Bulgaria) actually is a surgeon. Last time I talked to him he just couldn't stop complaining about spam in his email...
--
Mouse
But to the companies e-mail is really all that matters anyway, so the fact that the other info is fake is moot.
Then I suppose it doesn't really matter that the e-mail goes to a throw-away account, never to be as much as seen by anybody either? I'm sure I've got enough SPAM to fill up multiple GMail accounts from once-offs just sitting there collecting SPAM until they're full and eventually killed due to inactivity.
Oh well, let them believe someone as much as sees the headline of their e-mails. I certainly don't care.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And why is it? What if the shareware author just wanted your email address? (There are some shareware packages where the licence says you just have to email the author, for example.) Then are they similar?
And even if it's not emailware, you're swapping something of value for something (presumably) copyright-protected. In the shareware case, it's money. In the normal subscription case, it's some limited demographic information. In both cases you have the ability to still get the copyrighted stuff without giving your something-of-value, and they're similarly unethical. (Not identically unethical, though!)
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
I bet having an email @asdf.com probably gets "cleaned" from most spammer's lists before they even try to spam you
bite my glorious golden ass.
Many thanks. That could be very useful if I ever again find myself filling out a registration form that requires a valid US zip code. (I live in the UK, but it appears that not all webmasters realise that different countries have different postcode systems).
That is because quite a few sites require you to actually enter a valid, working email-adress to be able to register, typically they'll send out a validation-email with a link for you to click on or something.
On the other hand, there's no reasonable way for a website to check any of the other info you put in, I am certain that more thouorugh research would show that though only 20% of the email-adresses where outrigth false (as in bounces), another significant part are "spam-only" or "throwaway" accounts, and even *more* of the info collected in all other fields is incorrect.
It'd not surprise me in the least if 75% lie when asked privacy-invading questions with no easy method of verification such as "household income", I know I do. This is more than enough to make the collected data complete junk, and negate any imagined positive effect of collecting it in the first place.
And, to think I haven't ever bothered to register at Slashdot....
A newpaper or a Tv website can track what you read or what you see. This is easily done with cookies or your IP address.
So, if a reader visits a site daily and reads certain types of articles and seemingly always avoids other sections of the paper, you can pretty much figure out what that person is about, in general terms.
Registration is like putting a nose on a face. They can ask for more money to sell that info to advertisers and any likely buyers. Remember: commercials sites on this Internet thingamajig allow for advertisers to know more about you than surveys and Nielson families provide.
>> I didn't realize people put real personal info into these things (110-year-old surgeons from Bulgaria named Mickey Mouse).
I have a real big problem with lying and liars. Mainly because of my principles, but also from mishappennings derived from situations in which I lied to someone or, more often, someone lied to me.
>> Also mentioned in the story is a web site called BugMeNot.com, which lists 'communal' logins and passwords for on-line newspapers.
Using a communal password is lying, too, so it doesn't work for me.
Allowing anonymous access will always be a plus for me; while some papers may discard it, other sites may offer this and will be favoured by me and others.
And if you think I have something wrong to hide, well, wouldn't it be easy for me to conceal everything under a fake name?
"Poor people are always more honest."
Maybe it's just the tinfoil beanie talking but I had the idea of them using post codes (zip codes) and other details to link up different profiles (or selling them on to other companies that will. If I care enough (and I trust them) they usually get my real(ish) details. If not, I make it up. (I have one hotmail account I use for registration. I just log in every few days and empty the whole lot.)
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
You know, I really agree with you here, if we're talking about these situations on a case-by-case basis. That would be the ideal situation. And I also agree with you about the importance of trusting whomever you're giving your details to, and the agreement you make by doing that. Like you, I live in Canada. I've given 100% legitimate registrations before, both on the web and in real life. Not too often, but when I have a reasonable belief that they won't bother me too much with the info.
Anyways, where I do disagree with you is:
The agreement on the table is not unreasonable, and doesn't deserve civil disobedience. Save that for times when the agreement is unreasonable.
Again, taken on a case by case basis, you're right -- it doesn't deserve complete cynicism towards and rejection of the agreements you make in these situations. But put these individual cases in the larger context of an advertising saturated society. More and more effort and money is being spent collecting information about us, figuring out where we go, what we like, what we do, and how we spend our money. Overall, it can feel very intrusive. Sometimes I feel like a target. I can't even take a piss in a public washroom without staring at an ad! I don't feel like I have much control over what large organizations know about me, how they collect it, or how they use it. And I also don't think that that sentiment is uncommon.
Is putting in a false address in order to read an article petty? Yeah. Does it accomplish much? No, probably not much. Do I have a chip on my shoulder, concerning my attitude towards these sorts of practices? Yeah, sure. But apparently so do a lot of other people, such as the people who set up and make use of bugmenot.com. Some of the demands corporations (and governments, and other powerful organizations) are making today *are* unreasonable, if you ask me.
I installed AdBlock on Firefox a little while ago. I love it.
Compare it with banners ads sold on number of shows, clicks AND sales. The first are insanely high but also easily faked. Clicks are slightly more reliable but any advertiser is really intrestted in the number of sales generated.
Sure, any advertiser favors the instant gratification of a sale today, but they also recognize (or should) the need for repeated visual impressions, the payoff for which, in the case of some prospective sales, may be years down the road - I don't need a sprocket today, but I'll certainly by aware of your name when I am in the market for one.
What about the billions spent on road-side billboard advertising anually? Have you ever clicked through one? OTOH, what about that double-truck ad on pp. D28-29 of the Takealeaky Times - what percentage of the readership even happened to flip thru those pages?
Even more suprising England did actually win the final....heartstopper of a match though.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
They should save their money and skip Reuters, which is little better than a press release distributor in recent years. AP is a membership organization (member press organizations pool content), albeit a costly one. IIRC, AP functions somewhat like a cartel and if you were to start a new paper, your membership would have to be approved by the extant members in your market. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this aspect.
As one of those unfortunate domain addicts, I have an over-abundance of domain names. Being king of your own domain means you can have any email address you want, so I register with unique addresses for each site I sign up for. NYC@[domain].com at newyorktimes.com, slash@[domain].com here, charlotte@[domain].com at charlotte.com, etc, etc.
In 3 years of doing this, the only spam I have ever gotten from signing up for ANYTHING, EVER, was from Honda.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
bugmenot has a firefox extension; seems to work right click on the page select bugmenot you get a popup with a username password works for me
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Or do you mean on different sites?
Why do you think they'll do that? Did you read their privacy policy? Does it say they'll do that? Or did you assume it was bad? Or you don't trust them to follow their privacy policies?
The sceptic in me thinks that any kind of profile matching by something as vague as postal code, even if everyone was honest, is very very difficult, if not impossible.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
This is one question I will avoid a site rather than answer. There is one valid reason for wanting to know this: something that you intend to happen to me is critically dependent upon the presence or absence of certain organs. One example would be sexual intercourse with likelihood of conception -- but I only want to read the news, not have a freaking baby! {Similarly, age and income are not relevant unless you are planning to lend me money and want to be sure that I [a] can afford to pay it back and [b] aren't going to die before the repayment period is up.}
Why do sites ask this anyway? Well, this is a bit of an oversimplification; but if you answer "female", then it puts out adverts for things like shoes, cosmetics and weight loss products; if you answer "male" then it puts out adverts for car accessories, video games, power tools and that sort of thing.
Well, in most countries that is actually illegal since it is a form of sex discrimination. {Anyone know if the Unruh act would apply in California? The one that says any garment that would constitute appropriate dress on a woman must be held also to constitute appropriate dress on a man.} A man has a right to see adverts for shoes, cosmetics and weight loss systems, just as a woman has a right to see adverts for car parts, video games and power tools. It is a matter of personal preference and it depends more upon what lies between the ears, than what lies between the legs.
Now think about this. A cybervillain manages to access an ISP's server logs, and discovers an IP address which is being sent adverts for shoes, make-up and diet pills, from a registration site which asks a person's gender. If he can hack deeper into the system, and discover a physical address associated with that connection, then he has effectively located a potential victim.
Ask any CPO in any nick and they will tell you: if you're a woman living alone then you never reveal the fact to anybody you have a choice not to reveal it to. You use your initials, so they can't see it's a woman's name, without a prefix ("Ms" / "Miss" / "Mrs") -- just "A.J.S318." is less obvious than "Anita Jane S318.". Some even advice against double-locking your front door {i.e. so it can't be opened from the inside} because if anyone sees you do it, it shows the house is obviously empty. {Use a Chubb lock as well if you think a Yale lock isn't enough by itself}.
Although our hypothetical cybervillain is already prying somewhere he should not be, there is no earthly reason why the NYT et al should be {possibly illegally} practising this kind of sex discrimination in the first place -- if they simply displayed the same adverts to everyone, then women might be a little safer.
And by the way, I see nothing wrong with lying if the correct answer is "none of your bloody business" but the person doing the asking has not provided such an option.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
That's what you use the alternate domain names for.
The NYTimes random login generator. On this page is a javascript bookmarklet that will fill the NYTimes "who are you" page with random data, then you just click submit and you are golden. Couple that with clearing your NYTimes cookies and you fill their DB with lots of junk data. I am personally responsible for probably 50+ completely random registrations at the NYTimes alone.
It's also quite easy to modify the bookmarklet to work with your favorite site. I modified it to work with the Washington Post and coupled with a cookie clearing javascriptlet I've been personally responsible for a ton of "info poison" for the Wash Post.
My washpost/nytimes cookie clearing javascriptlets are based upon the cookie clearing javascriptlet from this site: http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/
Every time I have some reason to visit either site, I generate a brand new, completely random registration.
It's true: If I want some single piece of content of dubious quality from a dubious site, I just might put in false details. I do use a hotmail address whenever I don't know a site ahead of time, but it's not exclusively a spamtrap. If they want my real address, I usually walk (err..click) away. But I can't remember the last time a site that I didn't trust asked me for personal details that I didn't want to give. Maybe that's unusual.
The problem with advertising being in washrooms is separate from (but related to) the problem with online subscriptions. Much of it is because many things are 90% to 99% publicly funded, and then some profit-driven body "donates" the last 1 to 10% to get their name plastered all over it. John Raulston Saul talks about this in On Equilibrium. The market should not have to correct that; it's publicly funded.
This is a problem we should deal with properly, too: When a body gets their name attached to anything that is majority-publicly-funded, the percentage of (capital and ongoing) costs paid for by the sponsors should be made clear.
In restaurants and bars and stuff, if it really bothers you, try complaining to the manager. You might be surprised how far a calm, well-reasoned complaint would go. (Thought to be honest, I like urinal/stall ads. They give me something to read. I wish they had more content.)
In malls: what do you expect?
On roads: lobby your city council for better beautification laws. It ain't hard to speak in front of your council, especially if they're discussing anything remotely related. It's fun, takes some balls, and you see how/whether you can make a difference. (I spoke to the Waterloo, ON City council about student housing.)
It's a lot of work, and not really worth it to me for advertising, but it's the Right Way. I
(And if it doesn't bother you enough to at least try the "right way" then things are probably working as they're supposed to.)Can give me an example? (Privacy-related.) One where walking away isn't completely reasonable?
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
No, it isn't. Giving out bogus details is like giving out bogus details. There is no point in making up an analogy where none is needed. Arguing from a bogus analogy is like a broken pencil... pointless (to paraphrase Blackadder).
HAND.
For instance, they might show ridiculously ad-ridden pages (with a 2 minute DHTML/flash/full screen "click to continue to article" ads) for those with bogus registrations (based on a bad email address). They could do anything from showing non-updated (day old) news or, at worst, add "not" after every "was" or "had" and completely throw the reader for a loop. Of course in the last case, they'd probably need to modify their logo/title to show that it was no longer their newspaper to maintain their credibility.
The technology to do this is trivial. If the day comes when a falsely-registered user is worth less to the site (because of advertiser's refusals to pay) than non-readers, I could very well see this happening.
Sorry, this is just too much. Not everything is a right or discrimination.
Yes men should be allowed to view female targetted ads.
Realistically companies target their advertising to the intended customer. This isn't a violation of your rights. They just wanted to target a different group.
You would be wasting time selling Maybachs in trailer parks, so don't bother trying.
Got this username/password from bugmenot.com. Too bad I won't actually get any Karma if this comment should be modded up.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
Yeah, right - like the people selling those mailing lists do any quality control!
They're filled with dupes (one analysis I saw found 56 of the same address), invalid formats, etc. all to increase their claims of "100 MILLION E-MAILS!"
probably used alot but
abuse@[domain].{com,org,net}
said Fred Mann, general manager of Philly.com
I don't know how many times I've used "Mr. Mister Mann" as a fake name... but it's enough for me to get a chuckle anytime I find a real Mr. Mann.
A buddy of mine likes to use the fake address yomamabe@dacorner.com . I just have stuff like billg@[domain].net, philton@, dmcbride@....
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
"They're also probably aware that their readership will go down proportional to how much information they want"
Well, the information does have an equivalent monetay value (i.e. what people are prepared to give up the information to receive) which varies from about $10-$20 for simple half-page registration forms, to $50 or more for multi-page forms, or if there's any likelihood of the data actually being used against them (such as giving information for an insurance quote which may end up being used to calculate rates in the future even if you don't buy the insurance)
$20 worth of information to read a newspaper? No thanks, I'm using to newspapers costing 50c, and we only buy those for the television section (which isn't online in any convenient format in any newspaper I know)
oh, and anyone who says "get over it" regarding privacy issues can go live in the big brother household with larry ellison and scott mcnealy...
Those assholes don't even remove abuse@ and admin@ from their lists, and you beleive they do QC on those lists???
It seems most folks haven't realized the best stuff out there is free and doesn't require registration. For example: linux, Open BSD, the surf, math, and on and on and on..... I wouldn't register for any other web site (using accurate personnel data) except Slashdot. jamej
use sales@domain.com
Eg, when registering with xyz.com, use sales@xyz.com. That takes care of most. If it's blocked, just use the sales@competitor.com address.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Why does online registration offend, but not offline?
Why so much angst about online newspaper reigstration when we've been providing the same information to the same newspapers for years when we get a paid subsription to the dead-tree version?
The same info gets collected and entered into the paper's databases.
Why is providing a (real) name and address so someone can deliver your subscription not a privacy issue, but everyone gets hysterical about keying the same info into on web form?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
New York NY 10001
or spamhole.com; it works very well too.
is not to promote these sign up newspapers.
most any article you can find online will be found on not just one, but a dozen websites.
so, why does slashdot allow links to registration required sites like NYT? i dont know, but it is ANNOYING.
Mailinator is: http://www.mailinator.net/mailinator/Welcome.do
or fuck@off.com
or nonofyour@goddamnbusiness.com (wordy, but I still like that one). I also use that one for first and last name, so I've gotten used to "Hello, Nonofyour!" on websites.
On a small site that I run that requires registration to access all of the information, I would say about 25% of the accounts people sign up for are bogus. Most just make up their details, then the email is in the form of [slam of your keyboard]@[popular Internet service].
Most of the accounts are used once, then never used again. I bet tons of people sign up for ny times, use it until their cookie gets deleted, then just sign up again.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I just give them all fake info and use the same nickname and a password that I can easily remember(because who gives a fuck if someone guesses it?)for every stinking newspaper site that requires registration. If I have to give a real email addy to get my initial password from the site, I just use my standard junk email address that I use for crapola like this, then I get the initial password and reset it to my simple password.
Also, it's best to use a name that nobody else will probably ever pick, so you can use the same name at all the papers. Like XFlintstone, password Pebbles, for example, then you never have to think about it when you have to enter your name and password for one of these sites.
And finally, if they make you use a longer password, like 8 characters and your initial password is shorter, just add xs to the end of it like pebblesx until you meet the minimum, or just pick a simple password that is 8 characters to begin with, because I can't imagine any site requiring more than 8 characters for this type of password, at least not in the near future.
I use Nonna Urbixness as the first name and last name.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
On a related note, I know what happened to thenewyork/times login. A guy I know in a private forum (no, you can't have the address) changed it. He made a post about it, complete with the new password. I logged in with it fine and, being the good /.er I am, changed the password back to times. Apparently he noticed and changed it to something new. How is bugmenot.com going to compete with people who just want to be jerks?
Isn't there a web standard data format for this subscription info? Like an incremental set of groups of info, starting with username/password, then adding real name, then contact (email), then phone/postal, then credit card, then demographic (age, occupation, etc), etc? A form would ask for , and you'd see a button marked "Send personal info". Click it, get a dialog box with the requested info items already entered, retrieved from the browser's local Preferences database. Each item would have a yes/no checkbox. Close the dialog with a button for "SEND" or "CANCEL"; "UPDATE" would open another dialog for editing the locally stored data.
The days of remembering personal data, spending time retyping it, and making mistakes would be gone. Multiple profiles, with different data selectable in the dialog, would manage different personality scenarios. Submission transactions would be logged. Resubscriptions, including revisions after identity theft, could be automated. And the submission could be digitally signed, with the hash kept as a receipt by both parties. The copyright on one's personal info could be enforced. Possibly a standard default license, requiring the recipient to supply a copy (minus private data) of every list to which one's identity has been added, with selectable optional stronger license requirements (payment, non-distribution, etc).
I recall some kind of "Privacy Platform" standard, but it never arrived, either stillborn or orphaned. Now we need it more than ever. Where is it?
--
make install -not war
The target site will just deny refers from butmenot.com
User has to cut'n'paste to avoid this.
Just set up a "junkemail@yahoo.com" type address for those quick registrations that require an email address to send a password to.
It's all but certain that the poor overworked mail administrators who are tasked with monitoring the abuse@ role account have nothing to do with the editorial content nor the web site or web site registration policy.
You'd do much better by abusing the letters-to-the-editor mailbox :)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
As for the issue of collecting personal info. I think it's fairly reasonable for them to attempt to characterize both the size and demographic of their readership in order to sell ad space. I don't think every little annoyance is justified in light of the "it makes money therefore it is GOOD" attitude some coorporate stooges have (pop-ups come to mind), but yeah, they're supplying a service, and if that's what they have to do to stay afloat. If it bothers you that much, fake your info.
What would work better is no annoying logins, just a form on the main page someplace where you can voluntarily click off on what banners and ads get displayed by topic, and/or it is parsed with what story you are looking at. And personally I prefer to look at printer friendly text pages instead of the latest flasheroo. Online news sites are expensive because most of them are just too freaking busy. Earlier webmasters understood that concept, now it appears to have been forgotten, perhaps to keep people employed? I don't know, but there ya go. Simple concept, google does it, these online registration papers are trying to beat the best success story out there, which proves they are WRONG.. You will see the ads anyway, might as well have them be somewhat relevant to your normal interests, and this CAN be done without logins. For instance, google sidebar ads, I have clicked through to a lot of them before after running a search, because they were relevant to my interests, and I don't need the ad company to have some cost increasing studies and extra people to hire to figure this out, to determine what my interests are because I already know that much better than they ever can do, and it doesn't require me logging in to them to know that. Same effect, better in fact, and it's better than logins and surveys from both privacy concerns and from useability and numbers of eyeballs looking at your website concerns. Some people won't ever look at ads, some will, you won't change that with a login or not. I will if they are relevant to my tastes, which can be determined by flicking off a form quickly and just by which articles and stories I am interested in. The insta-form method is superior, and nowadays it's just RUDE to ask a new visitor to your website for their email, right off the bat before you do anything else, because anyone who doesn't realise there's a spam problem is not paying any attention. Slashdot is an example of what I mean, I am not blocked from content immediately, even if I don't "login". I get offered a better expoperience if I *do* login, but I am not hit with a brickwall just to get to the site. It's a better idea. Google doesn't block me from their site, and as a consequence I use them, and their pages ALWAYS look good to me and always load fast and are clean, smooth, and it's never mattered what browser I use, and I don't have to eat their cookie to use the site, or be required to have the latest hardware or be on a broadband connection.
I have two basic criteria when I surf, if you are on the web and want my traffic,for whatever reason, don't make it hard for me to use your site, so your page should render fairly decent in my browser and with my connection-not yours but mine, and it shouldn't be a hassle to get to the content. One or the other of those problems is almost tolerable, *both* is a deal breaker, and if either one is "too bogus for me" that's a deal breaker as well, no visit from me.
The problem of spam and online privacy is real, and online privacy is important because it relates to meatspace privacy down the food chain. We have ENOUGH databases now. I walk into the grocery store I don't want to "login" to use their store. If I go to a newstand and buy a deadtrees magazine or newspaper, I don't want to login to buy it or read it. I'm willing to pay a reasonable fee for it because I know that sort of copy in hand is expensive to manufacture, and they don't give me the option of a cheaper version with just the two sections I am interested in, they are forced to sell the entire paper or mag. And here's where online is better, I don't have to "buy" the entire thing, I can usually get by with a page or two, I am hardly ever going to look at every single page on any online newspaper site.
If the online edition is too expensive for them, from bandwith and having to have a higher amount of employees all the time just to produce it, and they got su
People here are always complaining about registering to read news. All those jokes about giving your first born child to the New York Times. Yeah, they're funny, but let's be serious for a moment.
First of all, the New York Times is a FOR PROFIT company. Second of all, they have employees to pay so that their employees can then eat and feed their families. They offer their service for free. All they ask in return is that you provide some information so that they can target ads. Is that so much to ask for? Would you rather just lay out cash?
Frankly, I was more than happy to provide the NYT with real registration information. I use their service and I'm very happy that they provide it for free. I'd be pretty upset if they had to start charging for it because everyone was sharing registrations or providing false information.
Complain about it all you want, but I think it's a very small price to pay. I registered years ago with correct information and to date, they have not sucked my checking account dry, trashed my computer, or done anything else sinister with the information that I'm aware of.
Too many people in the online community feel they're entitled to get stuff for free, but you have to remember that there are people behind the scenes, real people, with jobs that need to feed their families.
I'm personally very thankful that so many news sites do offer their stories for free.
Some of them seem to think that its wrong to give fake information, or that you may be tracked down or something. people need to be educated about this stuff!
If they could track you down that easily, why would they be asking for your information in the first place?
You're right, really, people just don't think much, do they? I agree... people need to be told about this sort of thing. I was doing some searching with my dad a few weeks ago for something fairly esoteric, and ran into a registration using his machine. Since I was searching for him, he immediately started giving answers to me for the questions on the screen. I had to stop a moment and ask him why he was answering these questions. He didn't have any ready answer for me.
So that got me into the whole "how much junk mail do you get" and "there's a reason you get 100 spam emails a day, you know" speech. Then I proceeded to fill in fake info to the registration screen, and you could see the lightbulb turn on in his head. It simply had never occurred to him to use fake data or how/where companies get information for junk mail and spam and such.
I admit that it took a bit of time to explain how companies (some, not all) sold this data in bulk to other people, who sold it to other people, and so on and so forth, until some scumbag who emails you ads for viagra or cicalis from mexico gets a hold of it. He couldn't believe that a company would sell data like that. Most people never think about this sort of thing. Frankly, I think that a lot of people aren't comfortable with the idea that information has value. It's like the fact that you can actually SELL INFORMATION simply doesn't register in their minds. Maybe, being computer geeks, we're more used to this concept or something. I don't know for sure.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Registration is a slight pain in the ass, but I don't mind filling their spam database with garbage like this.
:) )
First Name: First
Last Name: Last
DOB: 1/1/1900
Email: nottelling@almostspamless.com
Password: 12345 (same as my luggage
Would you like to receive our newsletter: Sure!
"Don't you just love it when you watch your country slide into authoritarianism little by little each day."
And I'm still amazed at the numbers of europaens who can see what is going down in their own nations, and what is going down in the US, who just don't get it why a lot of us in the USA really want to hang on to our firearms. It's scary to think about it, but you have to look to history to see the actual *fact* that people who willingly disarm, to accept the notion that they are both incompetent to handle a tool and that their rulers are always going to be "nice guys", by either getting faked out into it or by force, are usually always eventually heinously persecuted by their own governments. It has happened so many times in the past....
Learn from history and do it better, or repeat the mistakes and suffer. The planetary amount of "crime" and violence is and never has been as high as the amount of "official crime" and violence perpetrated by out of control governments and their hired mercenaries, taken as an overall total. The timing changes some here and there, but eventually all governments become despotic, and becoming a willing victim in advance is a non smooth move.
Comparing it to sowftware piracy and whatnot, might be a nice hyperbole, but... somehow it still fails to convince me. Let's calm down and think about it.
Software piracy hurts someone. It means lost revenue. If I had pirated, say, KOTOR instead of buying it, Lucas Arts, Bioware and the retailer would have been cheating of some 40+ Euros. Worse yet, piracy hurts other software users. Budget decisions and genre decisions are based on how much money did the last game bring in.
Now let's look at newspaper registrations. _What_ legitimate revenue stream do they lose? (Again, keyword being: legitimate. Selling that data to spammers is not a revenue stream I'd want to support.)
Now I understand registration for _polls_, as you mention about G&M. Fair enough. I can live without taking part in polls. But what most of us bitch about doesn't involve polls.
Now I also understand demographic statistics. E.g., "how many males between 20 and 30 years old read our news."
But even those don't need the level of detail that some of these obnoxious registrations require. E.g., how about asking directly the age group, instead of the exact birth date? There is no way in heck to believe that exact day and month of my birth can be used in any useful statistic.
The same goes for a lot of other intrusive details these idiots _require_. E.g., house number or telephone number. _What_ kind of statistics can one make out of that? "How many people living in odd numbered houses read our newspaper?" That's bull. That's not a statistic, it's useless trivia.
So here's my take on it: the bigger the registration form and the more unnecessary personal data they ask for, the more I'm convinced that they're clueless retards without any plan. People who didn't actually think _why_ and _what_ _for_ do they need that data. They just collect it because, dude, it's way cool to have so much data about all these people. It almost feels like power.
And the less convinced I'll be that bogus data is actually hurting them in any way. It's not like they had a (legitimate) plan for that data in the first place. Whether it's _my_ data that collects virtual dust in some marketroid's pointless database, or that of a fictive 12 year old Bolivian brain surgeon called Yura Sukker, they get exactly as much use out of that data: none whatsoever.
On the other hand, _if_ they actually do the smart thing and only ask for whatever general non-specific data they actually need (age group, country, etc), I'll probably actually give honest answers. Who knows? They might actually have some plan and clue, in that case. Might as well encourage that kind of people, because they're obviously a dying breed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I refuse to read any papers where I have to register. I don't believe what I choose to read should ever be attached to my name. Its a privacy issue plain and simple. Would you buy a newspaper from a machine that required you to slide your drivers license through it first? Yeah sure I could create fake accounts, but then I would have to start maintaining my junk Hotmail account again. =P
I have profiles on different sites
The sceptic in me thinks that any kind of profile matching by something as vague as postal code, even if everyone was honest, is very very difficult, if not impossible Very difficult to do accurately. Probably a lot easier for an agency that doesn't care too much if they link you with a child molester or a terrorist.---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
I always use a@b.c for my fake email needs...
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
According to the current USAToday online poll, closer to 60% of people make stuff up. See... http://ww1.usatoday.com/survey/response_question.a sp?id=2141
There are companies that aggregate information from hundreds of sources (including your credit report) and come up with a fairly accurate profile of YOU! Remember, there *is* a ton of accurate info on most people out there from sources other than these types of on-line registration.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Does anyone else use news.google.com and simply skip over all of the subscription articles? It's not as if there aren't alternatives to any particular story listed there. And it's not realistic to think that I'm going to want to go through some random registration process every time I click on a link. I'd just as soon all of the subscription only papers just went away or were filtered.
Michael
I've been doing the same, and - oddly enough - gotten almost zero spam from the 50+ aliases I've generated thus far.
/.'ers and went to the trouble to determine my real email address
/. a prime spambot target.
In fact, the worst aliases so far have been either my generic alias, or my slashdot one. The slashdot one (which I used when posting stories) isobfuscated when I use it online too... which tells me that either:
a) Somebody didn't like my posting and submitted my unobfuscating email for spam
b) Spammers don't like
Either one sounds plausible really, since there are a lot of idiots on any online community, but the anti-spam sentiment (and the postal mailbombing that can occur) probably makes
"The business model here is the same as for the dead tree version ==> Advertising. Tradional newspapers make money from advertising, not from selling newspapers. The money you pay when buying a copy of a newspaper doesn't cover production costs for most papers. The rest is made up by advertising money."
:)
But, but, we're geeks. We don't understand business. How dare you enlighten our self-imposed ignorance?
Seriously, I hear a lot of stuff on "/." that indicates that most Slashdotters only have the most superficial understanding of business. e.g. makes money.
Funny thing is I had a conversation a couple days ago with someone like the original poster, whom we gave your answer, and STILL he didn't want to register AND wanted the newspaper (yes he's a Linux advocate who reads this forum).
Some people simply don't understand that they can't have everything their way.
At least you do not require that they pay for it. The registration is trading some personnel info for there info. Using information instead of cash is a fair exchange.
e /leaderpost_howtosubscribe.html) wants to charge existing customer an extra $5 a month for the right to read the newspaper online. $10 a month if you are not a regular subscriber.
The Leader Post (http://www.canada.com/regina/leaderpost/subscrib
I think everyone who reads this should fire an email off to feedback@leaderpost.canwest.com about them Charging for the Electronic Edition. Maybe they will listen when slashdotted.
" Sorry, this is just too much. Not everything is a right or discrimination."
Are you certain? Seriously as someone once pointed out. If you want to kill a discussion, turn whatever's being discussed into a right.
What I would like to see in this "discussion" (preaching to the choir is more like it) is the POV of these businesses, and what they need to do to survive as a business, without being a destructive force in their respective societies.
There's some middle ground here, and it's not being hit in this discussion.
Delivery addresses don't have to contain any name at all. All they need, is a street address. And, for example, 99.999% of all magazines accept "First name: Our; Last name: Friend" as subscriber info. They don't care, as long, as subscription is paid.
That way you get your slice of a dead tree, and marketoids are scratching their head, trying to figure out if "Our Friend, 2nd street 33, New York, NY 10001" is male or female, so they could spam the mailing address with corresponding "Offers"...
Hyperom.com
No, I have the same scheme as the grandparent poster, and my amazon registered email address is amazon@[mydomain].com. I set this up about 2 years ago, so maybe it's a new block, but I haven't gotten any request to change my email or anything....
Just think about that one for a bit. It's my favorite information to give.
Register a domain ($5-10) /year
.. you know who spammed you ...
... so SPAM and privacy is a concern of mine ..... anyway I always know who's ass to kick when SPAM arrives
Redirect ALL mails for the account to somewhere
*@domain.tld -> your other account
every time you register, you put the domain in the email : eg
slashdot.org@domain.tld
and TADAAAA
I work with pharmacies, debt management, sometimes casinos
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
that has the functionality you're looking for, i think...
If one is paranoid about the FBI getting one's registration info from the New York Times, well..I think that's a sign to get out of one's country, whichever country that should happen to be.
Munging privacy-from-government and privacy-from-marketers is silly; they have different rules, goals and methods.
-Rob
-Rob Ewaschuk
It is an article of faith on slashdot that "everybody" lies on registrations. My own data shows under one percent falsification. Perhaps most people are not as dishonest as slashdotters. :-)
Perhaps most people are not as smart as slashdotters. :-)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Back in the day it was common courtesy to register the user/pass cipherpunks/cipherpunks on a site that needed reg. like these. So first you try the cipherpunks login, if it works, great, no reg needed. If not, you create it and let other cool punks in the know use it. Good to see this tradition is alive and well.
Shouts to all the cipherpunks reading this.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
emphasis mine.
Even "severly limited" spam is more span than I find acceptable. I will not usually lie (too much) about my location on an online registration, but I always lie about my email address, for the reason you have just helped me illistrate.
what's in a sig, anyway?
Me love bugmenot...
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
Privacy.net was made for this very purpose. Using the me@privacy.net address on registrations guarantees no human will ever see an email sent to the address. Upon sending an email to the address, they'll receive an autoresponse back saying, among other things, that "The person who provided you with this e-mail address did not perceive value in receiving your e-mail and/or did not want to provide you with their identity."
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
..Scroll down to bottom of page...see REJECTED!
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
The problem is many people don't know how to make a profit from their business. Most new businesses fail.
The internet is a very challenging competative environment, it has a low basic barrier to entry, but a strong network effect.
Good competition minimizes profit. To be successful you must offer value to your customer.
The advertising model can work, google has well targeted ads. Ebay has capitalized on the network effect to provide more value then their competition.
Linux companies have done good business selling free software. By adding value through control and management of that software.
Computer consultants or job seekers have used their work on free software to advertise and prove their skills. (Linus is a good example here)
The fact that other companies or groups haven't figured out a business model isn't my problem. Either sell me a product I am willing to pay for, or go out of business.
I use mailinator. Biggest advantage over a fake e-mail address, you can get the one time e-mail you need to register (that many less reputable sites require).
So if i want to create a yahoo account for games, i just add joeshmoe@mailinator.com. and go to mailinator to receive my 'activate account' email.
Mailinator jsut creats a password free e-mail address when ever it receives an e-mail to the address. It then deletes it about an hour later
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
IANAL, but it seems to me that this practice is illegal in Canada under the new (2001?) PIPEDA Privacy Legislation.
/need/ your name and contact information to send you the latest headlines, something they would undoubtedly be unable to do.
This legislation makes it illegal for any company offering commercial services to ask for personally identifiable information unless that information is specifically required to provide that service. In other words, the online papers would have to prove that they
Currently the process of challenging the practice of companies is complaints driven. You have to file a complaint to the Privacy Commission, and they are required to investigate and publish a decision within 1 year. So far they've published over 300 such decisions, including some against major banks and credit checks, major websites and cookies, and other significant change in information gathering practices.
Perhaps someone should file a complaint with them?
You simply do not know how every newspaper in the world treats their address list.
You might think they behave this way, you likely know that some (10,100,1000) don't, but not all are like that.
I seriously doubt you are actually an influential knowledgable strategist.
1. You made the statement in my subject that is likely false, and even more likely unprovable by yourself.
2. 1% Falsification rate. This is a really small number, to state this with any certainty you would have to verify thousands of registrations. My own experience is mistakes are much more common. At least 2% of all junk mail I get has my name/address wrong. Even my credit report had my name misspelled.
3. The only working business model. You know for certain the paid subscription sites do not work? I have actually read that some subscription sites are profitable. Again a likely false statement that is likley unprovable by yourself.
root@localhostm (Sorry bob)
postmaster@localhost
bob@home.co
But your example is wrong. Would you pay $20 worth of information to get a lifetime subscription to a newspaper? That is the correct analogy.
help@microsoft.com harsh but fair
I am a sig
Yes, that's why I filter out those articles. Please see gnews lite for an even lighter version of google news.
You're welcome to doubt my credibility, or you could Google my name. I'll address your three points.
1) To clarify, I'm discussing the business practices of U.S. newspapers. The set of U.S. newspapers employing the free/registration Web model is finite and I've looked at every one of their TOS documents. Most do not send advertising email to customers at all. Those that do send emails control the conditions. (Of course it's possible that the policy says one thing and they do another. But people get fired for that.) When a newspaper sends email to registered users, including advertising mail, the process is handled either in-house or through a technology provider such as ExactTarget or CheetahMail. In either case, an advertiser is not given the address. The list is considered proprietary data owned by the newspaper.
2) Been there, done that, looked at thousands of registration entries. I was surprised at first by the general level of honesty, but then, most people really aren't angry, paranoid and nutty, even though it might seem that way on the Internet.
3) Yes. Vin Crosbie has a good, detailed dissection of the weakness of the paid model.
I still disagree with you.
But I appreciate your fair, well thought out response.
3) I think paid subscription can and will work if something of sufficient value is provided at a fair price. The fact that the paid model is weak does not prevent it from being successful.
when the registration requires a real email address to verify first before it lets you complete registration?
Like it sends you a link in email to click on to activate your account, or a code you have to enter into a web form?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Cypherpunks
Cypherpunks
Iwethey
Iwethey
Two that I know of anyway. Until they stop allowing the password to be the same as the user ID for security reasons.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Orion Blastar, my handle, my alias, and many organiztions think that name is real. I have a Yahoo address all mail for Orion goes to, and I check it every day. I always ask not to be put on third party list and not to add my name or email to lists, but it gets added anyway.
;)
:)
Apparently Orion gets credit card, insurance, bank account, loan, etc applications with rates better than I can get with my real name! I am not sure how, but somehow Orion got a credit history better than mine, with no income reported or recorded at all and no record of ever existing besides online web site registrations. If I did not use my real address on the registrations, I would have never known these things. He does not even have a SSN or any record of existing anywhere on the planet.
Orion Blastar is the ghost in the machine, the man who never existed, but gets treated better than the man who does indeed exist and is behind the ghost.
In a way, Orion Blastar is an Internet experiment of mine that went way out of my control. Based on a fictional character I used to play in a role playing game, and with fictatious posts in various forums, and pretending to be a space pirate, and various other nutty things. Plus a way I can register with an online web site and still stay anoymous. Woot! Who knew it would go this far?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
from the inevitable spam people get when they like, actually use their real info when registering.
I don't think there are many newspapers that send spam to the addresses with which people register. Certainly, well-known newspapers, such as New York Times or Washington Post don't. I never use fake addresses, I always use emailias addresses, always a new one every time, so I would know who has abused the address. I have never received spam to such addresses used for registering at newspaper or other similar websites.
For about a year, before it started requiring registration, the Washington Post tried a half-measure where it asked you for a ZIP code, age and gender when you tried to read a story. Then it set a cookie and never asked you again.
... it only speeds the day when we'll have to pay 3 cents every time we download a formerly ad-supported web page.
People I know would joke about how they were 120-year-old men with 77777 for their ZIP Code. Why exactly? What did they have to gain by lying to the Post?
Nothing. Well, surprise, surprise, the Post found it couldn't use this kind of crappy data to sell ads -- and they *need* the data to sell ads, because nontargeted ads are worth almost nothing to advertisers. So now the Post has to require full registration. Now I have to remember a username and password.
Thanks assholes. You're so clever.
Lying on registration forms or using bugmenot is no better
And after all, what we're talking about is fraud. It may be a little white act of fraud, but it's still wrong.
Why don't you go ahead and post your personal information here. Don't worry! We promise not
to misuse your info, unless we decide to change
our mind.
I usually use example@example.com, because that domain is not available for registration .
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Mod redundant... I saw other people post this further on. Next time I promise to read the whole thread. :-(
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
"But your example is wrong. Would you pay $20 worth of information to get a lifetime subscription to a newspaper? That is the correct analogy."
No. Because newspapers are just glorified advertisements anyway, and online newspapers are even worse because (a) you can't read them while someone else is using the computer, and (b) they're in a format that's difficult to read (short, uninformed, separated over multiple pages, and squeezed into the left 200 pixels of the browser window.
Newspaper sites that require registration just don't get it-- they're far from the only game in town by any means, and if they're that clueless I see no reason I would want to read anything they have to say. There's plenty more sources I can get the same information from, and chances are even their own articles are mirrored somewhere, if I cared. Its quite convenient that Google news informs you right at the link that reg is required, so I don't even have to waste my time on them.
Actually, if what others are saying is correct, physical attributes are exactly the reason they want registration.
Others will probably move to the Washington Post's scheme, which IIUC, is trying to serve the reader ads based on where they're from. Specifically, whether or not they're from the D.C. area.
What do they block? It would hardly be possible to block people using their own domains - there are so many different e-mail services that they cannot be sure whethere it is a domain of an e-mail service or someone's own domain, and they hardly want to lose customers who are not able to register.
Now, as soon as you can use your own domain, you can track them. Maybe they block amazon@..., but you can track them with any string. It would be much better to use a more complicated e-mail address, anyway, otherwise you never know if you get spam because Amazon sold your address or because of a dictionary attack - it could even be a joe job, an enemy of Amazon sends lots of spam to amazon@ at many domains, and many people who use that system for tracking will think it's Amazon's fault.
Of course, if you use something more complex than just the name of the company, you have to administrate a list of e-mail addresses with data about who you gave them. Therefore, I think it is easier to use services like Sneakemail or emailias, there you can create as many e-mail addresses as you want (at their domain, not your own), and there are easy web interfaces to administrate the aliases, the e-mails will be tagged when forwarded to your address and there are lots of options.
But if you don't want to use such a service and have domains of your own, I recommend to attach at least some random string to the addresses, e.g. to use guo89wz_amazon@..., guo89wz_companyx@, guo89wz_companyy@... (to make it easier to remember, it can always be the same string). That way, you can at least assume that something went wrong at the company in question (selling the address or they were hacked) and dictionary attacks are not likely (of course, those of companyx with which you registered could guess the alias you have for companyy - so, it's still a bit problematic, using real random strings would be better, and services like the ones mentioned above facilitate this).
Agreed - a clear, succinct reply.
(Plenty of other threads about cookies - and yet the OP is +5, Interesting.)
(sigh)
<grrr>
Nohue Kahabit has always been my favorite.
So what are these people going to do baout people who simply visit their local library and read the paper for free? Ask for each viewers info? Their point is completely bogus. As most of their "news" is.
Ahh, but you see there will always be advertising, whether you like it or not... there HAS to be!
Why?
Well, we do need to be told when something new appears that we may wish to have. How else do you find out about the latest Apple product? You are told by advertising...
Oh, you reckon you don't need advertising cause you could just walk into an Apple store and ASK them what new things they have?
What about the new companies that come along with truly new and inovative products that you might actually want, might actually be able to live a better life with... how are you going to find out about them unless they TELL you about them?
How can they tell you about them? Well, that would be through some mass media form of communication in general, which, guess what? Is called advertising.
This complete and utter aversion to advertising (I wonder if it could be called adversion?) is illogical and counter productive.
Sure there is too much, sure most of it is really for stuff that we already know about or don't need/want... but there will always be legitimate uses for it.
(How about a charity day letting people know it's coming up???)
still a wonk
Oy! I happen to be a 100-year-old practising doctor in Bulgaria, and I've been getting thousands of spam emails lately. Stop it, you young punks! In my day, you would have been beaten with a llama-hair whip-of-7-tails, and forced to eat dried Kal-Chulasch for a month......
I never paid for a newspaper in my life. 90 percent of a newspaper is garbage, particularly the stupid advertising. 50 percent of the alleged reportage is canned press releases and infomercials masquerading as "news". I might want to read ten NYT articles in one year -- why should I pay full sub price for that? now if they cost a penny a piece, with some billing system whose overhead was less than a penny a transaction, I might consider that fair.
I donate to news sources I trust and support, which means ones that are not beholden to advertisers. but when asked for reg info by sources I don't trust (and am only reading to find out what flavour of horsepuckey the brainwashed masses are being force-fed this week) my instinctive response is NOYFB and I simply don't read the article. they get neither my info nor my eyeballs. how is that a win for them?
lalala will this get past the lameness filter ? only time will tell.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
I'm pretty sure it was Amazon that didn't allow me to have amazon@mydomain. Not a big deal, of course, I just used a different E-Mail address, but I was a bit startled that they didn't allow that address. My assumption at the time was that they didn't want people tracking their spam that way.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
myusername(spamtag)@hotmail.com works
myusername+spamtag@hotmail.com doesn't
my local ISP takes both, so just use whatever works. So long as your ISP doesn't change mail hosts, you're okay, and at worst, hey, you just lose your nytimes registration.
that is one of those freebie forums, they have google sidebar advertising that parses the text in the posts and manages to find (most of the time) relevant ads. It's interesting too, to watch it. The forum covers a huge range of subjects, so you see a lot of different ads. It's fairly effective. I guess if you were to limit yourself to only a couple of advertisers, then yes, you show what you have, but the alternative idea seems better, and no harm in partnering with google as an adjunct to your regular advertising. You can also just do amazon links that are relevant as well, a lot of people in the news have books for sale, for another example, it could automagically go to your news websites amazon account where the appropriate book review is located, and etc sort of ideas. And zero of that requires a login to get to the content.
Work it both ways towards the middle, de bloatify your website, provide the steak not the sizzle, news, not flashy stuff, and adjust advertising so it's relevant to the news article as much as possible. The world has a buhzillion products and services, there is bound to be something related to most news articles, and if you can't find an exact match easily, you can still run a generic interest ad for something.
I used the scheme mentioned above, amazon@[domain].com and they allowed it.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Tahya al-Moqawama al-Iraqiya!
Soon the American pigs will pay when their cities burn as they did to ours! We do not forget al-Fallujah and by God we will avenge the ten thousand that died for the American imperialism!
Death to America!
Death to America!!!
Death to America!!!!!!