BugMeNot for Android

Many sites want you to sign up and log in before they let you do anything. Not all, though. The xda forums saw the light a long time ago, and they removed the login requirement to download apps from their forum.

But there are plenty of sites that want you to sign up, hand over your email address, and log in whenever you want to read or download something. This can get annoying real quick, especially for sites that you plan to use only once.

Enter BugMeNot. This service at bugmenot.com uses community-generated login/password data to use sites without signing up for an account.

And now there is an Android app for it. Copy/paste the offending URL into the app, then copy/paste the login data back into your web browser to sign in without signing up.

Bug to spray away: special characters often show up as little rectangles or other crazy symbols, and those logins don't work. BugMeNot should learn how to deal with different character encoding formats.

Edit: Good news! A BugMeNot update killed the bug.

BugMeNot won't remember anything, so if you visit a site more often you have to feed the URL into the BugMeNot app over and over again. A bookmark feature in BugMeNot would make the app a lot better. It could use some browser integration too. It would be really convenient to hit the "share" button in your mobile browser, tap BugMeNot, and have the login details automatically filled into the form fields.

Edit: BugMeNot is now available from the share menu and takes you straight to the passwords. You still have to copy/paste 'em into the form fields yourself, but maybe that will be automated in a future update? A BugMeNot add-on for Dolphin would be great too.

For now you might as well bookmark bugmenot.com in your browser, but if the app matures a bit it may become a welcome addition to your arsenal of useful Android apps.

• BugMeNot on Google Play
• bugmenot.com