| Internet | ||
|---|---|---|
| General and Detailed Guides | ||
| Internet · Topic outline of the Internet | ||
| Detailed list of Internet topics | ||
| Major Aspects and Issues | ||
| Demographics of the Internet · Digital divide | ||
| Digital rights · Global Internet usage | ||
| History of the Internet · Internet democracy | ||
| Freedom of information · Net neutrality | ||
| Internet privacy · Internet phenomenon | ||
| Functions | ||
| World Wide Web · Voice over IP (VoIP) | ||
| Email · File sharing · File transfer | ||
| Instant messaging · Internet fax | ||
| Internet gaming · Mobile VoIP | ||
| Underlying Infrastructure | ||
| Internet Protocol (IP) | ||
| Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) | ||
| Internet service provider (ISP) | ||
| Regulatory Bodies | ||
| Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) | ||
| Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) | ||
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A registered user is one who uses a program or a website and provides his/her credentials, effectively proving his/her identity.
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Generally speaking, any person can become a registered user by providing some credentials, usually in the form of a username (or email) and password. After that, one can access information and privileges unavailable to non-registered users, usually referred to simply as guests. The action of providing the proper credentials for a website is called logging in, or signing in.
Since the site knows about the identity of persona using the page, it can:
Registration has many disadvantages for web users.
Registration is effectively a backhanded way to allow cookies, something most users try to avoid. In many cases, it even mimics 3rd party cookies. Once you've registered for a web site, the web site can effectively store all of your browsing history on its own server where you can't delete it, and share it with other commercial databases.
In fact, gathering personal information on users is the main reason some web sites require registration.
According to the web site for BugMeNot[1], a service for by-passing registration. The following are some of the reasons to avoid registration.
There is also a major disadvantage for both users and the web site owners.
Most users will not use your web site if they have to register, because registration takes time. Most users visit most web sites only briefly. When a user is searching through the results of a web search, it takes many times over as much time to register for each web site. In most cases, the user will just move on to another web site.[2]