Registered user
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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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[edit] Technical differences
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.
[edit] Advantages of using user registration
Since the site knows about the identity of persona using the page, it can:
- Display personalized data (the simplest way is saying "Hello, John!")
- Switch to personalized settings (e.g., "Disable pictures" or change site language)
- Let the user perform actions from his identity (like post in a forum using his nickname)
- Access private data (like email or pm)
- Control automated edits, also known as spamming
- Allows the Web Developers to email registered users with updates on their site.
[edit] Criticism
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.
- It's a breach of privacy.
- Sites don't have a great track record with the whole spam thing.
- It's contrary to the fundamental spirit of the net. Just ask Google.
- It's pointless due to the significant percentage of users who enter fake demographic details anyway.
- It's inconvenient for the user to register/login, for viewing content.
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]
[edit] References
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