Alas, as I had suspected, bugmenot.com is no more.
Bugmenot was an answer to web sites that require (snoopy) registration — name, e-mail, age, income, etc. Folks would register faux answers at bugmenot’s site, and then various applications (including Firefox by extension) could pull those answers down and fill the fields with little effort (and no value to the siteholders).
I’m mixed on the whole “free registration” thang. On the one hand, it’s a pain in the ass. On the other hand, if it helps someone pay the bills to provide me with their free information, is it so much to ask. And on the gripping hand, it’s so easily spoofed, it seems like it would be useless to the site owner.
And it is, as noted, a pain in the ass. So sometimes I would use bugmenot, and other times I wouldn’t.
And now I won’t any more, since bugmenot, at least, seems to be out of the battle. Suspicion is that Evil Lawyers are to blame …
BoingBoing has been following up on this story, indicating that bugmenot got kicked off its host — possibly because its IP address had previously been used as a skinhead site and someone complained. Word has it that bugmenot will be back .
And now it is .