Many websites require viewers to have an account in order to use certain features; the number of sites which allow for anonymous, or “guest” participation, is small and vanishing.
If you intend to view content without making an account, you could use a disposable email and create a “throwaway” account as outlined in a previous article.
Alternatively, you could use a “shared” account. Essentially, this is a throwaway account someone else has made and shared the password to. We do not recommend participation on-site with such an account, but it can allow you to view things you could not previously.
Bug Me Not – Find a Disposable Account
Begin by finding a website that requires an account for access. We’ll use The Guardian for this example, purely because the site has some benefits for account holders and registration is already free.
Open the Bug Me Not website and enter the domain you wish to find an account for. The Guardian has several; guardian.co.uk, guardian.com and theguardian.com will all take you to the same site.
As Bug Me Not does not group all of these domains together, you may need to check all of them individually to find an account that someone has made with the intention of sharing.
Having found an account to use, you can also view the “Success Rate” associated with the account. Understandably, some of these accounts may be used in such a way as to necessitate banning them, hence they will not all be functioning.
Many of the accounts used will have disposable email addresses like those we covered in a recent article. Not every website will return a result, in which case the following message will be displayed.
Having found an account to use, simply copy the username and password onto the website, and then rate the account on Bug Me Not. After all, user participation is the only real way to highlight deactivated accounts.
Conclusion
The reality of shared accounts is that while they are useful, they will not be as convenient as having your own account with your own password, details and username. The names used are often machine-generated, which is good for ensuring something unique but bad for creating a lasting username.
If you do decide to try Bug Me Not, we strongly encourage you to treat any account you use as though it were your own.
