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A Vision For a World Free of CAPTCHAs

Posted by Soulskill on from the is-that-an-oh-or-a-zero dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Slate argues that we're going about verifying humans on the Web all wrong: 'As Alan Turing laid out in the 1950 paper that postulated his test, the goal is to determine whether a computer can behave like a human, not perform tasks that a human can. The reason CAPTCHAs have a term limit is that they measure ability, not behavior. ... the random, circuitous way that people interact with Web pages — the scrolling and highlighting and typing and retyping — would be very difficult for a bot to mimic. A system that could capture the way humans interact with forms algorithmically could eventually relieve humans of the need to prove anything altogether.' Seems smart, if an algorithm could actually do that."

2 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. I read something about this by gcnaddict · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember reading... I can't remember if it was a post about an algorithm already written or a proposal for an algorithm which would run alongside a CAPTCHA through the entire registration process, but the basic premise was just that: measure the entropy and fluidity of human movement and determine whether or not the user is a bot based on whether or not the user fits typical random human usage patterns.

    I also remember the writer of the post noting that this kind of system would basically stretch the human-unwittingly-answers-CAPTCHA out such that humans would have to do the entire setup process manually instead of just the CAPTCHA, thus defeating the point of automated setup.

    Does anyone have this article? I can remember reading it but I can't find it.

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  2. Re:Just a Thought... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I disagree. I don't think there's anything terribly un-mimicable about the way humans interact with web pages.

    Besides, have you considered the effect of false positives (which will be many)?

    With a captcha it's a black/white decision and people know why they passed/failed.

    In the world being proposed in the article people will have to sit dejectedly wiggling their mouse while a web page decides if they're human or not based on some unknown criteria. Pass or fail? It's up to the machine.

    After two or three sessions of this people will be running away screaming from your web pages.

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