Comments on: What's that blurry wavy graphic to challenge registration called?

Question: What's that blurry wavy graphic to challenge registration called?

psmealey — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:11:54 -0800

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?

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:13:04 -0800

Captcha.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:13:59 -0800

Doh. I'm an iditiot. Can't believe I couldn't remember it. Thanks, ericb.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:14:14 -0800

also, an idiot.

By: jammnrose

jammnrose — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:14:15 -0800

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:14:21 -0800

New York Times | Monday, June 11, 2007: A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers.

By: magikker

magikker — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:17:51 -0800

The best one is The Hot or Not Captcha

By: TomMelee

TomMelee — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:24:58 -0800

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.

By: desjardins

desjardins — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:32:18 -0800

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.

By: Partial Law

Partial Law — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:36:04 -0800

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.)

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:36:19 -0800

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.

By: The Deej

The Deej — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:58:28 -0800

I like iditiot better!

By: CrayDrygu

CrayDrygu — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:12:41 -0800

@desjardins: "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."

Don't feel too bad. I'm a gay guy, and it took me six tries to pass that thing set on men, but got past the women on the second try.

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:01:02 -0800

Piggyback: are all captchas case sensitive? Is their an awareness among developers that this causes a lot of false negatives for some users (me)?

By: exphysicist345

exphysicist345 — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:23:57 -0800

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.

By: The Pusher Robot

The Pusher Robot — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:51:28 -0800

Related: A New CAPTCHA Approach