Tuesday 21 January 2014

CAPTCHA - so illegible that only spammers can make it out


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Just an example of the numerous spam emails the blog gets (and I know we've touched on this before).     Whenever you have spam, of course, you have CAPTCHA – described by Wiki in the following manner:

"CAPTCHA (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human."    

You'll be familiar with CAPTCHA,  and will no doubt have torn clumps of scalp from your head while trying to decipher it.   

Cracking the revamped  WW2 Enigma code was a huge challenge, until those chaps at Bletchley Park discovered the existence of a fourth rotor on the encryptors of the Kriegsmarine.   But cracking CAPTCHA?  Not a chance (see below).



Even at that size you can't make head nor tail of it. It has become so illegible that humans can no longer make it out.  

Spammers still can, if my inbox is anything to go by.   The other problem is that people post comments that never reach me –  I know this as they've complained their contributions haven't seen the light of day.  

As if the Sisyphean task of the poor blogger was not uphill enough – eclipsed as his/her medium has been by Twitter, Facebook and all the rest – without this rotten software making the gradient even steeper. 

Thing is, CAPTCHA had improved recently – it had become more legible with easier-to-make-out text and a photo containing a number.  Comments came in unimpeded and the spam box grew no bigger... so you have to wonder why they changed it again.

Turning it off isn't an option, as it means my phone would never stop ringing for spam notifications, so it looks like we are stuck with it.  

Sorry for the inconvenience...


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7 comments:

DC3 said...

Ha GM you think that's Spam wait until you get the first official Property Tax and Water Bills.

The Gombeen Man said...

Well done on getting past CAPTCHA, DC3. I wonder if there is any way of consiging the property tax and water bills to the spam folder?

spamboy said...

had to have two goes at it...

Anonymous said...

Why aren't they using sweetCaptcha?
its simpler for humans and tough for bots...

Ella said...

Hi GM, it's a wonder anyone can comment at all...

The Gombeen Man said...

Jasus... maybe it's my eyesight?

Anonymous said...

This is truly the bitter frontier of the battle between man and machine. Clinging to the conceit that we can cheat our successors with our analog credulity we feel the future close in choking our very essence with its harsh cold logic consigning us to to our footnote in history. Prove that you're not a robot indeed - now that is a real challenge.