Re: 5 minutes
Agreed, having to give a credit card for access to free stuff is not going to happen with me.
Maybe the credit card companies can give you a zero-value credit card, as an adjunct to a real card? It's a valid card with a validation code and everything, but any attempted transaction will be declined.
The one-time-use card numbers (that totally failed to take off here for some reason) would be ideal for this.