Protecting Paid Membership Site Access, Part 1

If you have some type of paid membership site that requires a login (even if it is a one-time purchase), I recommend that you submit your site for blocking at BugMeNot.com.

ButMeNot is a web site where people can post and access userids and passwords for sites that require logins. The main purpose is to avoid having to register for free sites so that you don’t get signed up for mailing lists and have your contact details sold to others. As a marketer, I have mixed feelings about it, of course.

I have my own mailing list for most of my blogs, and I don’t re-sell any leads, nor do I bombard your Inbox with email promoting every single product to be launched (and then some). I want you to sign up for my mailing list, and once you do that, I try to respect the permission you gave me by not abusing it. But given the abuse (and we are not discussing legalities here — just “what is right” in my eyes) that some marketers like to do with contact information — like sell it under the guise of “lead generation” — I don’t blame people for not wanting to surrender their contact info.

So what is the alternative? Read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of every website that you want to use (actually, you should do this, but people get in a hurry, get lazy, etc.)? Create a throw-away email account for every site you want to sign up for? Give false information?

Or use BugMeNot?

No, I can’t really blame people for using them. It’s a pain to have to register for each site I want to view, read their Terms and Policies, and decide if I want to give them the requested info. I’ve been tempted to use it myself on a few occasions.

On the other hand, if your login system is designed to protect a paid product, BugMeNot.com has a page where you can request to be excluded from their database. I recommend that Internet marketers and home business people take advantage of this opt-out mechanism.

If your site doesn’t sell anything and you’re not technically eligible to request a block, there’s a simple solution: Sell Something. Simply offer some type of upsell on the first page when members log in. Even if nobody buys it, you are still protecting paid content, right (and a good upsell offer — as long as it is relevant and delivers good value — will convert quite well)? Most membership site scripts have some type of option for “premium content” that make it quite easy to set this up.

They also do not allow sites that have age access verification under COPPA. I guess you have to be using active verification; it’s not enough to just say “nobody under the age of 18 can use this site”. So if you wanted to use some type of age verification system, that would work, too (but would probably cost more money).

Personally, I think that BugMeNot should allow any site to request a block, and since the Terms at many sites clearly state that passwords and userids cannot be shared, I have to wonder if they are actually facilitating the violation of these terms. And if this is the case, do sites whose users posts login details have any legal recourse against BugMeNot, or can BugMeNot pass the blame back to their users? Interesting questions!

So I recommend that you actually sell something on any site that requires a login, then head on over to BugMeNot and fill out their block request. I’d also check to see if your site has any login details listed; if there are, then I’d ban that user in accordance with your site’s Terms of Service.
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P.S. — They host their service at NearlyFreeSpeech.net and have private registration, which makes tracing down the real owners difficult to do, short of some type of legal summons (I know that they are not American because of the way they spell “unauthorised” in their Terms). And their terms do not state where legal action has to be brought… And perhaps it’s time to add a statement that your registered users are not allowed to post their login details on sites like BugMeNot (but talk to a lawyer for the specific wording — don’t ask me!).