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Baffling the Spam Bots

Posted by michael on from the change-addresses-every-six-weeks dept.

dumpster_dave writes "Scientific American is running an article, Baffling the Bots on techniques to outsmart and subvert spam bots and their chat-room cousins via CAPTCHA. You have probable seen this in the form of images containing text as gate-keepers to various on-line services. The latest evolution is using non-words and distorting the text such that even the best AI systems cannot decipher them, yet humans can not help but do so [cf., Gestalt Psychology]."

6 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Blind Users by X-rated+Ouroboros · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've often wondered how these types of systems can be made handicapped accessible

    --
    Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
    1. Re:Blind Users by EvilNTUser · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Then you have to worry about those with poor or no hearing, as well as those with poor or no sound equipment. Why not have someone solve a riddle or puzzle"

      Because then you'd be discriminating against stupid people, and keeping them off the internet.

      Oh, wait...

      --
      My Sig: SEGV
  2. I've always thought by Sir+Haxalot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that just using johnsmithword-AT-hotmail.com works fine (where word is taken out and -AT- is replaced with @) I use that and have yet to have a single spam email.

    --
    I have over 70 freaks, do you?
  3. Keep tabs on where your address goes by bigberk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everyone should know this by know, but you can control spam by keeping tabs on where your email address goes.

    The address I use to post to USENET is completely disposable. The 'swen' worm in fact picked up my USENET addy and spammed it with about 40,000 emails. The address is now dead, but I saw that coming.

    I have a public address which I give to casual contacts (who may not be totally trustworthy). This address changes yearly, and this keeps it spam free.

    My well guarded private address, which I only give to my closest friends, has gotten no spam for 5 years. I receive about 20 emails per day at that private address and there is 0 spam.

  4. Aren't they trying too hard? by danila · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Am I the only one having troubles deciphering the second word on the second picture?

    --
    Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  5. And I thought the eye tests were hard enough... by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure about others, but I have a difficult time with sites which use distorted numbers on a nearly matching background...and I'm not even color-blind.

    Sound is better, but even that sometimes can be difficult to understand - also, I don't have speakers hooked up on some machines I use; some folks disable sound due to abnoxious websites/ads that blast sound unexpectedly.

    Anyways, many of my relatives and friends can't get into sites that use distorted numbers, etc at all and are basically locked out; sometimes they get lucky and find a similar site (likely a competitor) to the site they desired, which doesn't use such nonsense...

    Seems to me a better way is use geotracking (too many inbound connections from similar sources [IP ranges, routes, browser config, etc), email verification, etc... ...and perhaps even requiring the person to call a phone number to activate the account - ideal for financial-based sites such as banks, payment
    sites, etc.

    With good heuristics (really the key to stopping automated bots in my view), any decent website should be able to filter out much of the bots and other junk - it's no accident really that many of the largest sites don't use distorted numbers, pictures, etc - how do they do without them?...perhaps be a good Ask Slashdot item :)

    Ron