Credit/Debt Recovery

BugMeNot.com = Hooray!

I'm diverging from credit and debt today to introduce you to an invaluable online service: bugmenot.com.

Compulsory registrations at online media outlets are a huge problem for bloggers such as myself. I want to offer readers a link to news stories that are of interest to this blog, and often add my take on the article.

If you've been with this blog from the beginning, you know I HATE compulsory registrations:

They violate your privacy.
They generate SPAM.
They're an annoying waste of time.
They're stupid–I never give my real email address to them.
The keep eyeballs from seeing the content your advertisers are paying for.

All of this is echoed on the bugmenot.com FAQ page.

Bugmenot stores registrations and passwords for over 20,000 web sites. The next time you're trying to get to an article that's hosted by the NY Times or Kansas City Star and find that you're impeded by some asinine registration/login page, pull up bugmenot.com, type in the url, and you'll be given account names and passwords to bypass the marketing survey and surrender of your email address.

Eventually, online editions of newspapers will give up this silliness. I don't feel the slightest bit bad about using bugmenot. I'm trying to direct traffic to them with this weblog, after all. The least they could do is not muck up the works with a stupid, waste-of-time, pointless registration process.

Prettypolictical's investigation of Harvey Warren

I'm not the only blogger interested in Harvey Warren and the NCC. Prettypolitical.com discussed Harvey's connection with arts4peace, a non-profit "multifaith arts group."

While arts4peace looks like a good-guy charity, prettypolitical's Adventures in GoogleSpace makes connections to the NCC, money laundering, and "offshore tax planning".

It's incredibly fascinating, and I urge all COB readers to take a look at prettypolitical's investigation of Warren and the NCC. See also John Wetzel's comments which suggest arts4peace and Financial Rescue Services are affiliated with the Church of Scientology.

Notice also that Harvey Warren was nominated for 16 Clio awards for advertising. Think that's all the NCC ever was for him: an advertising gig.