Heavens above, more ways to avoid web and email irritation. The Poorhouse is most frustrated when, before viewing some web page or downloading a file where the content is free and open to the public, your email address is demanded. Worse yet when you can't just type nonsense in as you then have to go check it in order to click on a link to confirm you are a real person - who can be sent adverts for Viagra.

It is often acceptable to demand some confirmation that you actually exist and are contactable in circumstances where you are going to be publishing content or paying money (for instance a web forum, or subscriber-only content) but for idle browsing it is just downright irritating to have to fill in a form, go check your email and so on for ostensibly no good reason - other than to let the site owner have your email address so they can email you "special offers" and the like.

A solution: use Mailinator. This is like the equivalent of setting up a fake Hotmail address for each site (or indeed person that you'd rather not know who you really are) that demands your address, only much quicker and more efficient. In fact, there's nothing to set up. Make up a name, for example 'whoami' and fill in your address as being 'whoami@mailinator.com'. Job done.

If you do need to get at the email to confirm your existence or get further information, just go visit the Mailinator site and type in the first part of the address you used ('whoami') in the relevant box. There you go, there's your email.

Of course there is nothing secure, safe or confidential about Mailinator itself, and all email gets deleted after a few hours. This is all part of its temporary, throw-away beauty. It is therefore only suitable for purposes like this and is in no way an equivalent to Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and so on.

If even that sounds like too much hard work for you, if the site you're trying to access is popularish, go check out bugmenot. That site is dedicated to providing you with generic logins to get past exactly the sort of annoyance above. Want to read the NY Times without spending ages faffing with a form? Use one of the logins that users have already supplied for that. The site is updated by us, the users of the web, so if you have any such logins go add them on to help others. Obviously do not add anything that would constitute an illegal act or would jeopardise the legitimate workings of a website.

For mega-convenience, bugmenot is also available as a Firefox extension. When you are presented with a pointless login page, simply right-click the username box and choose "Login with BugMeNot". It'll then try any user / password combinations known to BugMeNot automatically until a working one is found.