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Is The CAPTCHA Broken?

Here’s an interesting post from Coding Horror. Basically, describing whether the CAPTCHA is broken or if designers are just using sloppy methods. What I find interesting is software utilities designed to “break” the CAPTCHA. Looking at that post, Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail have unbroken CAPTCHAs. So, if the CAPTCHA was broken, I guess my question would be, why would Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail be using them? Apparently, they know how to do it right. Google also shows that a CAPTCHA can be effective yet readable.

Anyway, interesting read. Thought I’d share. Being a programmer, I can appreciate the nature of that post.

{ 4 } Comments

  1. Bert_2 using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu Linux | December 11, 2007 at 6:33 am | Permalink

    Well, you also have those guys who use questions like what color are green apples ?
    Seems like spam-bots can’t guess what the answer is ;)

    [Reply]

  2. Igor using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Windows Windows XP | December 11, 2007 at 8:24 am | Permalink

    I really like reCAPTCHA, from a Google guy and ex-Mono guy.

    http://recaptcha.net/

    [Reply]

  3. Michael Gauthier using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu Linux | December 11, 2007 at 9:31 am | Permalink

    We’ve found that even using a captcha (reCAPTCHA) our sites will still get several hundred spam a week. Spammers are using automated human-powered captcha breaking services. These services pay a certain amount per broken captcha.

    The Internet sucks.

    [Reply]

  4. Jennifer Bramble using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu Linux | March 1, 2008 at 11:32 pm | Permalink

    Perhaps you think the internet sucks now, imagine when you lose your vision how awesome these captchas become.

    http://churchturing.org/captcha-dist/ Some people are working towards making captchas ineffective simply for accessibility reasons.

    [Reply]

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