Registration Dodger BugMeNot Back After Outage

BugMeNot, a site that helps readers circumvent required logins for online content, is back in operation after going dark for several days. The site, created by an Australian programmer who assiduously guards his identity, was offline last week due to server hosting issues, fueling speculation that the host may have been pressured by news sites.

In a statement on the BugMeNot site, the founder -- using the moniker Mr. BugMeNot -- addressed the site outage noting that the site's previous host, Host Gator, had pulled the plug, intimating, but not substantiating, that the host had been pressured to pull the plug. The new site host is NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

BugMeNot was crashing Host Gator servers several times per day, according to the previous host. Host Gator cited performance issues as the reason for ending its relationship with BugMeNot rather than pressure for news organizations.

Readers can use BugMeNot to generate login names and passwords for sites requiring registration and thus avoid providing personal information in exchange for access.

The BugMeNot.com service has "liberated" almost 23,000 sites from what they term "registration bondage," according to a statement on their site. The most actively requested sites are:1.) www.nytimes.com 2.) www.washingtonpost.com 3.) www.latimes.com 4.) www.ajc.com

5.) www.chicagotribune.com

BugMeNot works with Mozilla and Internet Explorer. The site also offers a toolbar that users can install by dragging to their browser. As usage of the registration dodging service grows, some news sites that require registration have begun using scripts to auto-disable BugMeNot accounts.