Ali is furious. Renat is flabbergasted. Vanya Vasilchikov is more practical: He’s looking to buy a temporary Moscow residency registration — urgently! And Valera … well, Valera has bad luck: "Friends, help! I look just like one of the guys on the composite sketch they showed on TV!"

A week after the deadly blast in the underground passage at Pushkin Square, people living in Moscow without the required residency registration are especially nervous and activity is up on the web site where many of them turn for help — nelegal.ru.

A curious blend of civic movement, How To … book and support group, nelegal.ru sprang up nearly a year ago, after the apartment bombings that killed 300 in Moscow and other cities led to a noticeable tightening of security in the capital, including crackdowns on out-of-towners.

In the last few days, the website’s forum has again become the center of feverish correspondence among those who have had problems with the city’s infamous rules on obligatory registration.

Their anger is split between incompetent police who failed to prevent the blast and Deputy Mayor Alexander Muzykantsky, who said that after the explosion "all talk of freedom of movement [in the capital] should stop."

"Demagogy and impudence," says Lyudmila. "Blasphemy," adds Renat, referring to the city government’s attempts to "take advantage" of last week’s tragedy to promote its registration policy, which has been challenged both by the Constitutional Court and federal prosecutors.

Those who frequent the site have a broad range of questions — from how to survive random ID checks to how to buy a "black-market" registration.

Nelegal.ru provides advice for all of them. The site is the pet project of Alexander Milovanov, a 26-year-old computer programmer and part-time journalist, who has been a nelegal — or illegal — since he arrived from Krasnodar eight years ago. Attracted by the buzz of the big city, Milovanov refused to be intimidated by the whim of bureaucrats and law-enforcement officials who often make registering in Moscow far more complicated than federal law suggests it should be.

Despite challenges to their constitutionality and legality, Moscow’s rules have remained, making thousands of people "illegal immigrants" in their own capital and opening the doors for numerous abuses, ranging from deportation or imprisonment to widespread bribe-taking.

Those who visit nelegal.ru — which has been averaging around 100 hits a day and ranking in the top 30 of Russian Internet sites — can choose from a wide selection of survival techniques designed to fend off suspicious policemen.

"Dress well, but not extravagantly." "Prominently display mobile phones and pagers." Miraculous results can be achieved by casually flashing a newspaper and, in extreme cases, one contributor suggests, you can "put on workers’ overalls and carry around a few square meters of window glass."

And remember: Never quicken your pace when passing a policeman, and don’t let your gaze linger on their Kalashnikovs — it makes them nervous.

Should you nonetheless get stopped, "never give the police a false name, show them false documents, give a false address or lie in any way," the site advises, warning fellow "illegals" never to carry their money tucked in their documents or their documents in their wallets.

"Look the policeman straight in the eye, answer his questions slowly and concisely, remember his personal number and let him know you’re not in a hurry and will gladly proceed with him to the station," the site continues.

In case things turn nasty, the site also displays the telephone numbers of several rights groups and political organizations one can turn to for help.

The advice featured on nelegal.ru is not limited to helpful hints for avoiding police. For those prepared to face the bureaucratic hassle of registering, the site offers a full range of solutions — from an on-line copy of a recently published legal guide on registering through the courts to phone numbers of dubious private companies offering to arrange registration in Moscow or the Moscow region.

Moscow’s Migration Service says the registration is the only way of keeping "criminal elements" out of the capital, blaming most of the city’s "social and ethnic destabilization" on around 1.5 million newcomers. (The number has been disputed frequently by human rights organizations, who say the migration service’s methods of calculation are inaccurate. Human Rights Watch, for example, has cited research placing the figure at around 300,000.)

In the aftermath of the Pushkin Square explosion, city officials have said they would be harder on out-of-towners. But the regulars at nelegal.ru dislike being called criminals.

"We are doctors of science and laborers, artists and poets, programmers, … businessmen and kiosk vendors" who came to the capital "to work and live honestly," reads an open letter on the site. Criminals "don’t have problems getting the Moscow registration. They don’t need our help."

Apart from the practical help, what the website provides is a feeling of belonging to a community. "People sharing the same problems were finally able to communicate without fear," Sergey, one of the few "illegals" who agreed to share his experiences, wrote in an e-mail. "What bothered me most was the isolation that came with my status."

Maxim Chernigovsky, a legal expert with the Kommersant publishing house who offers free advice on the site, echoed Sergey. "Nelegal is first and foremost a strong form of emotional and psychological support for those who have access to it," he said. "When people get stopped by a policeman … for the first time, they often believe they really have done something wrong. … The site helps them get rid of this feeling of guilt and feel they aren’t alone."

It seems that, at least for a time, nelegal.ru will remain fear-free territory. None of the police officials contacted by telephone agreed to comment on the site; the only duty officer who did, admitted he didn’t really know what it was all about but added, "We probably think it’s something illegal."