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I was just trying to communicate my electricity meter values to the provider via the online form and had to click the refresh button at least two dozen times before I finally managed to guess those letters, thanks to a zoom level of 300%. The computer voice was all cracked up, hence of no use.
Assuming I am not the only one with that problem, how can anyone come up with such a ridiculous system? Who wants to spend minutes just in order to send a form?
I've removed the recaptcha from many of my sites as it's just too damn hard. The image captcha at least as far as letter go has outlived it's usefulness, the bots have as much success as humans. Add to that since so many sites use the same sytem like recaptcha it's the one they go after.
There is more workable solutions out there but they all have their own issues and once they become more mainstream they will be under attack too.
A standard logging of the requesting IP address, use of a tracking cookie, and a three strikes you're out policy on passwords will eliminate almost all repetitive bot activity for account holders on a site. What is left is to do then is verify cognition prior to the three tries to eliminate wasted computer time. The need to go into millions of choices is just not there in those cases and a simple visual can keep the gate. "How many women are in this picture" with a rotating set of images answers containing different numbers of men and women would be sufficient.
I saw a really good example of directional captcha years ago, for example you had 8 images surroundin one image. The image in the center had an indicator pointing to the object you needed to type in, but those have their own issues. If the object is a German shepherd is it dog, German shepherd, canine...
The best system you can have is obscurity that alters the form and dosn't use anything common. phpBB has really good system because you drop numerous plugins into it for many different types of captchas. The best one to date going back years asks a question, for it to be effective you need to create unique questions.
Me personally I don't even bother with captchas anymore, the latest system I'm using has eliminated 99% of the spam. I download hourly and daily different lists from stopforumspam of IP's and emails that were active over the last X days. It's rare they aren't listed and it helps kill the false positives because it's only over the last few days.
Some captchas are just broken and the people who design the websites don't keep up with making improvements. When captchas don't work it gets frustrating quickly for the user. If I have time, I will try to report broken captchas but I rarely do that myself. It makes me wish more evil on spammers and fraudsters every time I encounter a difficult captcha as that is why they exist online.
^ That doesn't help with Captcha's goal of preservation of human knowledge. The idea behind captcha is to preserve human knowledge at low cost so it can be accessed for free (for the most part). I don't see how your solution supports that goal.
Wh-at?!?!
I think you're losing it, man.
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Preservation of human knowledge??? Keeping it free?? What are you talking about??
Is there anything about technology that you don't like? Seriously. Post after post of people griping about any technology and you staunchly defend... everything. I swear. I don't get it.
Captcha sucks. I have seen so many better implementations to achieve the same result.
Solve a random math problem, like: 2 + 3 - 1 = ??
Or
Click the picture: which animal oinks?
You are not alone, Neuling! I do too have some problems with Captcha's, even when I clearly put all those letters in right order. I think that "human check by solving math" is easier to accomplish.
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Preservation of human knowledge??? Keeping it free?? What are you talking about??
Is there anything about technology that you don't like? Seriously. Post after post of people griping about any technology and you staunchly defend... everything. I swear. I don't get it.
Captcha sucks. I have seen so many better implementations to achieve the same result.
Solve a random math problem, like: 2 + 3 - 1 = ??
Or
Click the picture: which animal oinks?
I think NJBest is actually confusing the reCaptcha project with the generic term Captcha.
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Preservation of human knowledge??? Keeping it free?? What are you talking about??
The most prominent implementation of CAPTCHA is reCAPTCHA: What is reCAPTCHA?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrine
Is there anything about technology that you don't like? Seriously. Post after post of people griping about any technology and you staunchly defend... everything. I swear. I don't get it.
Captcha sucks. I have seen so many better implementations to achieve the same result.
Solve a random math problem, like: 2 + 3 - 1 = ??
Or
Click the picture: which animal oinks?
How exactly does math problems or identifying animals in a picture help in preserving human knowledge and digitizing texts? If it can't do that, then it's not achieving the same result (as you claim). Try not to have a narrow view when you try to understand technology. It helps to understand the the entire ecosystem to realize the impact of the technology.
I'm all for making human recognition easier for users... but let's not assume that math can accomplish the same thing as what reCAPTCHA does.
You are not alone, Neuling! I do too have some problems with Captcha's, even when I clearly put all those letters in right order. I think that "human check by solving math" is easier to accomplish.
But I guess those math tasks are even easier for spam robots to solve
Anyway, I thought about a different solution today:
We could create a not-for-profit service/site where one can open an account using only an email address (maybe one of those throw-away ones, they can't be created by spam robots anymore, you can change it later anyway) and a password. So while you register you are automatically assigned a 6-character case-sensitive alphanumerical code (should be enough for the world population I guess) that can't be changed. You yourself can define and in the future regularly change your password, of course. You note both down and when you go on a website which wants to protect itself from spam, you enter your 6-figure code and click send. The site will automatically contact the service and ask for the password associated with that code. Once received, it will then ask you for that code in order to confirm it, you enter it and click send again. Finished.
But I guess those math tasks are even easier for spam robots to solve
Yes and no. The biggest issue with captcha's is that they are so generic across many platforms. If you take this forum software for example and the developers of the software are using an addition captcha it's easily broken because it's used across many sites. It becomes a target, the bot is programmed to recognize it. That's why recaptcha which is probably the most popular system is so hard to read, it's a very big target.
If you built a custom form unique to your site and put a input box there that said type in the letter 1 there is not bot that is going to get by that.
The better method instead of addition is to ask a question, "What's the name of this site?". You can tie that to images too but if you're going to do that unique images, take pictures of different fruits and ask what they are. The key is that it's unique.
Bots are stupid and can only do what they are programmed to do, anything out of the oridinary will trip them up and even the ordinary can. For example the first timezone in the drop down list when registering on a phpBB forum is uninhabitable. The default timezone for the site is already selected, many of them never parse that data from the form and select the first one.
FYI it isn't just bots, captcha breaking by humans is booming business in many places like India. There is actually an industry built up around this. They have it set up where a human might be seeing hundreds of these hourly.
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