Web Users Angered by Anti-Spam 'Captcha'

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Captchas -- the jumbles of letters that users must type to gain access to some websites -- are a growing irritation, the Wall Street Journal reports. But programmers hope to make new variations that are both easier to decipher and harder to crack. From the article: 'Some captchas have been solved with more than 90% accuracy by scientists specializing in computer vision research at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Hobbyists also regularly write code to solve captchas on commercial sites with a high degree of accuracy. ... Henry Baird, a professor of computer science at Lehigh University who studies PC users' responses to the codes, has been working with colleagues to develop new generations of captchas that are designed to be easier on humans but baffling for computers.'"

captcha isn't that bad....

[Sancho]

...unless you are blind. Some sites have alternate audio versions for the vision-impaired, but it's still a problem.

And even if you aren't blind, I've run into many a captcha that I couldn't decipher. Poorly designed sites may delete the entire content of your post if you fail the captcha, but I guess that's a design issue for another topic.

spammer bounties

[EllynGeek]

As usual, the problem is approached from the wrong direction. When the dam bursts and the floodwaters cover the town, it's a waste of time to develop bigger and better waders. The correct thing to do is repair the dam. So instead of developing ever more elaborate ways to handle the spam flood, just shoot spammers. Put a cash bounty on them, dead or... dead. Problem quickly solved.

Re:Not the point

[Rob T Firefly]

But for your average site, the captcha just has to be "good enough" such that someone won't bother to write a crack to spam a small fish.

The paradox is, if a site has one that works really well for them, other sites will want to use it as well. As other sites use similar or identical systems, it becomes exponentially more beneficial for crackers to crack. So, as soon as something's good enough to use, it becomes good enough to crack.

Re:The human factor

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Type the color of this person's eyes" next to a JPEG

I'm color-blind you insensitive clod!

Seriously though, I'd absolutely HATE this if it caught on and they started asking about reds and greens. :(

Captcha is a nice idea but...

[erroneus]

... it is annoying for users. Sometimes I get it wrong because I can't tell if the captcha technique they are using is case sensitive and I can't always tell the case of the character! Sometimes a lower-case L can be confused for a number 1 or vice-versa. So yeah, it's REALLY annoying.

HOWEVER. A short and simple multiple-choice or true-false quiz might determine with some level of accuracy if the poster is a person or not. Simple stuff like a random image of a sheep, a lion, a bear or a whale with a radio button selection below it. It's easy to run through, it shouldn't require much skill from the user and has the potential to confuse interpreting software a lot more.

This approach could also even be ENTERTAINING to the user in that funny pictures could be used in the image interpretation drill. Such questions could be "Is this person having a good day?" and you can put all manner of interesting images in there for a true-false scenario. Being an entertaining method will definitely win fans. Being tedius, stressful and mistakable will lose fans.

Re:Different method entirely

[Pxtl]

The problem with that approach is that you can't autogenerate clever questions, so the computer-client can build a database of known answers. You might be able to reword them, at best. Even with procedural rewording, the question may become muddled, or the computer-client could look for keywords for a similar question in it's database of known answers.

Re:captchas discriminate against the blind

[kruhft]

And those of us that still like to use console browsers like emacs-w3m...

Re:captchas discriminate against the blind

[G-funk]

Then you're a fringe user, most likely a bearded unix nut, and unless they're selling unix stuff, most web sites don't give a shit if they lose your business.