What's that blurry wavy graphic to challenge registration called?
June 13, 2007 3:11 PM Subscribe
When you register as a new user on a site, often times you are presented with a graphic where the letters/numbers a blurred or distorted (to present bots from registering) and a box below it where you are supposed to replicate its content with keystrokes. What is that thing called?
Response by poster: Doh. I'm an iditiot. Can't believe I couldn't remember it. Thanks, ericb.
posted by psmealey at 3:13 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by psmealey at 3:13 PM on June 13, 2007
New York Times | Monday, June 11, 2007: A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers.
posted by ericb at 3:14 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by ericb at 3:14 PM on June 13, 2007
I just read somewhere the other day about a new one that takes photos of non-transcribed texts/documents and has you do them---so that you're doing something functional with your typing.
But then, I don't know how it knows what the right answer is.
posted by TomMelee at 3:24 PM on June 13, 2007
But then, I don't know how it knows what the right answer is.
posted by TomMelee at 3:24 PM on June 13, 2007
magikker, I switched to men and I had the damnedest time finding any hot guys at all in that captcha. Funny how the women were much easier to pick out.
posted by desjardins at 3:32 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by desjardins at 3:32 PM on June 13, 2007
TomMelee, you're talking about ReCAPTCHA. It gives you two words, one of which it knows the answer to. If you're correct in identifying the word that it knows, it lets you in and stores your answer for the other one. (For added reliability, it could also give each unknown word to several different visitors and only accept an answer once it's been given a few times by different users, although I don't think it does that now.)
posted by Partial Law at 3:36 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by Partial Law at 3:36 PM on June 13, 2007
TomMelee is thinking of Recaptcha
But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.posted by MetaMonkey at 3:36 PM on June 13, 2007
Piggyback: are all captchas case sensitive? Is their an awareness among developers that this causes a lot of false negatives for some users (me)?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:01 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:01 PM on June 13, 2007
Strange word, captcha. Do you know its origin? (I just found out.) It's an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", and is trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University.
posted by exphysicist345 at 6:23 PM on June 13, 2007
posted by exphysicist345 at 6:23 PM on June 13, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ericb at 3:13 PM on June 13, 2007