Web Users Angered by Anti-Spam 'Captcha'

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Captchas -- the jumbles of letters that users must type to gain access to some websites -- are a growing irritation, the Wall Street Journal reports. But programmers hope to make new variations that are both easier to decipher and harder to crack. From the article: 'Some captchas have been solved with more than 90% accuracy by scientists specializing in computer vision research at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Hobbyists also regularly write code to solve captchas on commercial sites with a high degree of accuracy. ... Henry Baird, a professor of computer science at Lehigh University who studies PC users' responses to the codes, has been working with colleagues to develop new generations of captchas that are designed to be easier on humans but baffling for computers.'"

Comments

What?

[Alex P Keaton in da]

I couldn't read the article. They wanted me to type CapTcha. Or was it Cap7cha? Oh well?

To read this comment enter the text

[LiquidCoooled]

HOT GRITS

I prefer kitten auth.

90% accuracy? Not bad.

[joshv]

"Some captchas have been solved with more than 90% accuracy by scientists specializing in computer vision research at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere."

Hell, that's better than my average. They are getting so cryptic, it seems I get them wrong about 25% of the time these days.

-josh

I often fail those Turing tests

[Bromskloss]

..a script might do better.

Re:captchas discriminate against the blind

[Rob_Warwick]

Which is why you should /always/ use proper alt tags!

Re:90% accuracy? Not bad.

[aztec rain god]

Not sure if cryptic is the right word

The human factor

[Rob T Firefly]

I wondered at the possibility of using a system that would require human intervention rather than AI for some simple reason of observation, like "Type the color of this person's eyes" next to a JPEG. The only downside, is you have to trust the average Internet user's ability to type "blue," so of course that plan goes out the window.

If I wanted to be really sadistic, I could instead present site readers with a sentence, in which they have to fill in either "their," "there," or "they're."

Re:The human factor

[CohibaVancouver]

If I wanted to be really sadistic, I could instead present site readers with a sentence, in which they have to fill in either "their," "there," or "they're."

Your a looser for even sugesting such a thing!

Re:Different method entirely

[93 Escort Wagon]

"Which of these is a number: A 2 R P?"

Or, even better, put it to music - and add a time limit!

"One of these things is not like the others,
one of these things just doesn't belong.
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others,
before I finish this song?"