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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]."

2 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
  2. 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.