[zeven7]

For forever I used yahoo.com to login to a captive portal. I don't know why, but for some reason it worked for me when typing google.com, etc didn't work. Somehow I figured that out and stuck to it. I haven't done it in a while, though, not sure if it would still work.

[rippercushions]

I always figured this was due to DNS caching: if you got a domain you never visit, it has to actually fetch it and that triggers the captive portal login .

[zamnos]

Exactly right - which is why neverssl.com now redirects to a randomly generated subdomain.