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WTF Is Up With: Captchas?
siresays.blogspot.com — You can't send email, buy concert tickets, join message forums, or download music these days without having to decipher some insane string of characters that look like an entry in Helen Keller's diary!
nohero- 380 diggs
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- w0th, on 07/05/2008, -3/+10I hate captchas, but as a a former webmaster, I know they're useful.
- lamiaconfitor, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Are we saying boo? Or boo-urns?
- juliehardman, on 07/05/2008, -5/+27Captchas are the dumbest thing that the internet has invented. Hasn't slowed down spam one bit, ok maybe a little!
- Azimuth1, on 07/06/2008, -1/+7They're actually a very good idea, it's just that creating one that adequately balances the two qualities of machine-readability and human-readability is a difficult problem to solve. The CAPTCHA that does that would be a perfect and permanent solution to automated form completion.
- DeathfireD, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4well since bots don't even care about what's on the image the point of adding dogs and cats and almost impossible to read text is pointless and stupid. Clean easy to read text has the same power and vulnerabilities as that ***** hard to read crap.
There are so many different, better ways to check if it's a human or a bot. It's a mystery why sites don't combine them together for added protection. - adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3@DeathfireD; "Clean easy to read text" would not be secure enough for high traffic websites like Rapidshare. It's OK for small blogs and such, but definitely not for popular websites.
- DeathfireD, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4well since bots don't even care about what's on the image the point of adding dogs and cats and almost impossible to read text is pointless and stupid. Clean easy to read text has the same power and vulnerabilities as that ***** hard to read crap.
- zulfy26, on 07/06/2008, -1/+4The 1+1 = ? ones usually work better though, strangely.
- adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3Maybe on your blog, but not on high traffic websites like Ticketmaster or Gmail.
- Azimuth1, on 07/06/2008, -1/+7They're actually a very good idea, it's just that creating one that adequately balances the two qualities of machine-readability and human-readability is a difficult problem to solve. The CAPTCHA that does that would be a perfect and permanent solution to automated form completion.
- manzplan, on 07/05/2008, -1/+36some times they are so freaky hard to read, I have to guess several times before getting it right..
- MalusMalo, on 07/05/2008, -4/+15I hate CAPTCHAS ... but they have their uses.
- thirdcoastborn, on 07/05/2008, -1/+24My Yahoo Mail started using this crap. I can't send a email without confirming I'm human. I fired Yahoo and I'm sure thousands of others have done the same since they started that *****.
- JigoroKano, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4Strange. I use Yahoo Mail (Classic) and I've never gotten a captcha.
- ninesky01, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3you're an obvious spammer... sheesh...
- inotocracy, on 07/05/2008, -1/+18I recently got a captcha on Craigslist that read "dirty Mexico". Makes you wonder if these words are randomly generated pairs, or pre-written.
- nohero, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1SS for digg gold
- wildfire, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5Depends on the data source for the words. For example, http://www.captcha.net/ uses scanned books as the data source and the users help to verify the words scanned.
- adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Some implementations use words, some use random strings, and some use Markov-generated strings that are pronounceable but not actually English words.
- tkstock, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1I use reCaptcha for that reason - you're helping decipher books, and the whole reason you're doing it is because the machine couldn't read it!!
- Kanele, on 07/05/2008, -6/+3i wish digg had less, but hopefully, they're ok
- jockser, on 07/05/2008, -4/+24I can't download from rapidshare anymore... and I'm not kidding, I tried 30 times with no luck (and I do mean luck because that's the only way to get it right) It's to ***** hard. I took me 20 times just to figure out that you only have to enter letters with cats on them, I never seen something like this before and I was sure I had problems with FF3 and JavaScript, I tried reinstalling FF3 and java before I saw that you need to look for ***** cats. I really hope they'll change that, because that drives people away.
- plup, on 07/06/2008, -0/+7You don't need to enter CAPTCHAs and wait for 964286 seconds to download files from Rapidshare anymore. It's been four days since they switched to a new scheme. http://rapidshare.com/news.html
- Hervard, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Rapidshare's Happy Hour is your friend.
- sogeshirts, on 07/05/2008, -2/+7This one t-shirt site has a tomsucks captcha making fun of the captchas on myspace.
- virtualonliner, on 07/05/2008, -1/+17What happened to captchas on Digg? I am not getting them for comments for some time now. Not that I am complaining.
- jmk4422, on 07/06/2008, -0/+7You still get them when you submit an article. I didn't know they were ever required for commenting...
- MarkTaiwan, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6i think the captcha for comment is only required for new users
- HigherLogic, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2I got one yesterday. I had replied to a lot of articles and it eventually told me something like, "Woah, slow down there" and made me type a captcha. Of course, I failed typing it about 5 times before I gave up.
- Nitrolinken, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2They appear if your accounts has been having incorrect logins.
e.g if you fail to login, captchas appear both when you login and when you comment. Though, they disappear after a while.
- wildfire, on 07/05/2008, -0/+12Another method that should be employed before using CAPTCHAs is transparent checking, for example:
http://www.asp.net/ajax/ajaxcontroltoolkit/samples ...- tkstock, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1"This approach is easier to bypass than an implementation that requires actual human intervention, but NoBot has the benefit of being completely invisible. NoBot is probably most relevant for low-traffic sites where blog/comment spam is a problem and 100% effectiveness is not required."
Not as secure, where security is required...
- tkstock, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1"This approach is easier to bypass than an implementation that requires actual human intervention, but NoBot has the benefit of being completely invisible. NoBot is probably most relevant for low-traffic sites where blog/comment spam is a problem and 100% effectiveness is not required."
- Errdoth, on 07/05/2008, -2/+10That's why I started questchas, they haven't gotten off the ground yet, but the principle is awesome.
http://thissitekicsass.net is where it's at :D- Errdoth, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5Bleh, should be:
http://thissitekicksass.net- RawSense2004, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Not bad. I've seen that around. I think it may have been once or twice. All you have to do is add 2 numbers. How hard can be? I prefer it. Great job!
- tkstock, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Adding two numbers can be easily programmed around. Questchas is a bit more secure.
- blackjack75, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5That doesn't seem very efficient. The example on the site asks "Most people sleep on a..." and gives 5 options. A bot will just randomly tries possibility until it works. 15% success rate is more than enough to spam everyone.
- adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2CAPTCHAs (and any other form of a human challenge) should be automated...as in you don't rely on a fixed set of natural language questions...challenges should be generated automatically with no human input.
- Errdoth, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5Bleh, should be:
- SIRBERUS, on 07/05/2008, -1/+14This article was more entertaining when I imagined Jerry Sinfield had wrote it.
- MattNF, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3EVERY article is more entertaining when you imagine that Jerry Seinfeld wrote it.
- SuperJimmyJimbo, on 07/05/2008, -2/+5captchas... new art form...or just a pain in the proverbial ass?
- kevman459, on 07/05/2008, -0/+14These "are you human?" captchas are unnecessarily complex.
"Which of the following would you prefer? A puppy; a pretty flower from your sweetie; or a large, properly formatted data file?- blackjack75, on 07/06/2008, -0/+8I am afraid many digg users, including me would fail this test. Obviously a properly formatted data file seems like a good choice.
- Burn, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Please tell me you did realise that was a quote from Futurama?
- blackjack75, on 07/06/2008, -0/+8I am afraid many digg users, including me would fail this test. Obviously a properly formatted data file seems like a good choice.
- artsii, on 07/06/2008, -1/+6cat captchas? seriously?
- xero9, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3I'm like a bunch of you. I can't read some of them if my life depended on it.
- jmk4422, on 07/06/2008, -0/+4At least Digg gives you the option to hear the CAPTCHA. Comes in handy when you can't tell what the ***** the letters are. I wish all the CAPTCHAs did that.
- redwallhp, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3And ReCAPTCHA provides a useful button to load a new image if the one you get is bad. And you're helping to digitize books too...
- Ransack, on 07/06/2008, -1/+4CAPTCHAS are waaaay too hard. Have you ever tried scanning in a printed a page? The computer misspells every second word (at best). Computers SUCK at reading text. Theres no need to distort them as much as they do to fool a computer.
- blackjack75, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2The problem with spam is that the bots get to try and try again forever. Even if it works one out of ten times it's enough to get through. AFAIK when google captcha's was beaten it wasn't a 100% reliability, but this was more than enough.
- adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3Customed crafted robots can easily read nearly all the existing text-based CAPTCHAs out there right now...go read the wikipedia article before you make incorrect claims like that :)
- Ransack, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5Heres an example of one that actually does ask for the solution to a math problem (yah like computers cant do math)
http://random.irb.hr/signup.php- PixelD, on 07/06/2008, -1/+3Love how it says refresh for an easier one. Yet they kept getting tougher the more I did it.
- tkstock, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1I thought they were all pretty easy... :D
- PixelD, on 07/06/2008, -1/+3Love how it says refresh for an easier one. Yet they kept getting tougher the more I did it.
- MasterThief117, on 07/06/2008, -1/+21Being a robot myself, I find captchas very discriminatory.
- bdub92, on 07/06/2008, -1/+3hey, dont ***** with Captchas
- nohero, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5I ***** with your Mom
ooo... burn? - vitalpixel, on 07/06/2008, -2/+4Really...
- nohero, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5I ***** with your Mom
- rentmitchum, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2If words were ghosts, captchas would be their ethereal ***** all over the internets.
- rentmitchum, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3Ahh, Hellen Keller, she was that little girl who hid in the attic from the Nazis.
- staffell, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2the last image (parody) would be hilarious if I could understand cyrillic
- YodaJones, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Dugg for reference to Helen Keller's diary. Actually I am sure Helen Keller's writing was more legible than captchas.
- micmania1, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1I use captchas on my website only to pot a new topic in my forum.
You can register without captchas and the only reason I implemented it was because I was getting spam from bots on it.
I use a simple 6 char string of numbers and capital letters. I don't use things such as o and 0 or L and l because they can be mistaken. There is a lot going on in the background, but it's a totally different colour to the text.
I don't understand why some make them so hard.
http://www.ultimateprediction.com/captcha.php- adidos, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Because your little website isn't nearly as juicy of a target as Gmail or Ticketmaster...
- tardmaster, on 07/06/2008, -0/+5Why couldn't Hellen Keller drive?
She was a woman. - matt247, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1rapidshare doesn't use cats anymore. there capture codes are much easier to read now.
- djsim, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2captcha
- KableKiB, on 07/06/2008, -1/+1His blog is ***** useless, all he does is complain then says he's no expert so he can't provide an alternate solution that would even work half as good.
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