Gotcha, Captchas
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You know those puzzle-like blockers of automated spam that compel you to read and retype distorted letters and numbers to gain access to a website? Their known as captchas, and they may not be as effective as they once were. |
Web companies are making the puzzles more challenging to solve--even for people--as online mischief makers design better ways to circumvent or defeat captchas, according to the article "A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers" in The New York Times on Monday. To protect their sites from spam infiltrators, the newspaper reports, companies are twisting captchas' letters, distorting the backgrounds, adding a confusing kaleidoscope of colors and making it tougher for people to get content they seek and websites want to distribute.
"They are creating tests that a reasonably healthy adult can't pass," Denver programmer and blogger Gordon Weakliem told The Times, confessing that he failed to correctly discern the captcha code a few times last week on the sign-up page for Microsoft's Windows Live service.
Is there a silver lining in creating technology to thwart spammers? Indeed. It shows how advanced technology, well, advances. Sure, it creates more headaches for people trying to protect us from those rascals who want clog our e-mail servers with unwanted stuff. But, there will be others who'll figure out how to beat them, at least for a while. And, then the game continues, as we gain more knowledge about how to use technology. These incremental tech advances are good. Besides, playing leapfrog is fun.
Comments (1)
where's the captcha that makes sure someone proof-reads their posts? :)
Posted by christopher | June 11, 2007 7:37 PM