Found this handy add-on from the list in the 50 Add-ons…Change The Way You Surf The Web post. Some sites (especially newspaper/television) require you to create a free account to view some or all of the content. Many people don’t want to give out their personal information or email address. In the case of the latter, some people setup a ‘junk email’ account for the purpose. Still, it is pain and time consuming to have to register then wait for a confirmation email before you see or worse get back to the content you were trying to view.

BugMeNot allows you to skip the whole invasive and time consuming registration process. When presented with a log-in box simply right-click and select Login with BugMeNot option and it will automatically log you in using a non-personalized login. If there is not currently a login for the site, users are invited to create on with fictitious contact information (note: you may need to initially use a real email address for those registration  which require confirmation/activation, just be sure to go back and change the email address.)

I have tested this add-on with a few sites and gotten mixed results. I would not work with The Washington Post, but found it worked on AZCentral.com (notorious for making you register/login after viewing a random number of articles). Also works great on AMO for those of you who want to download add-ons in the sandbox, but don’t have an AMO account.

BugMeNot works with Firefox 2.0 and 3.0.* and is about 19 KB. Note: User Agreement Acceptance Required