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Video Captchas are Hard for Computers to Understand but Easy for Humans (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the who-do-you-think-you-are dept.

A new company called NuCaptcha provides animated video captchas it says are much harder for OCR-based programs to crack than static captchas, but lots easier for humans to figure out. While at the 2012 RSA conference, Timothy Lord pointed his camcorder at NuCaptcha CTO Christopher Bailey, and had him explain how video captchas work and how the company makes money. The video includes demos of the video captchas so you can see what they look like (and the company's website has lots more video captcha examples).

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone know a good app.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's getting to the point where I feel like I need an application to read Captchas for me.

    Half the time I get them wrong. I swear a computer would HAVE to be better at translating them than me. This video is going to help- but we have to face the fact... EVENTUALLY, no captcha device will be able to block bots but not people.

    EVENTUALLY all bots will be better at breaking all captchas than humans will be.

    There will probably be a time we look back on the good old days when the internet was usable by humans as a means of communication.

    / Disclaimer: Oswald is an ex-bot who gained near human cognition and intelligence.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Does anyone know a good app.. by Canazza · · Score: 3, Insightful

      or CAPTCHAs that are impossible for a Human to solve but trivial for a computer. so if it passes, it's a computer! :D

      --
      It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
  2. Honestly by mseeger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The CAPTCHAs are already so "good", that i get identified as machines 7 times out of 10 :-(.

  3. Is this going to be flash-dependent? by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Being as the vast majority of video delivered over the web seems to be via flash, it seems like this will itself be flash-dependent. Which would, of course, exclude people who cannot or will not use flash for their browser.

    Of course, it may be that this will be deployed on sites where that demographic is not important...

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  4. Re:Love it! by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I dunno.... to me they seemed a LOT easier to read then a lot of recent image captchas (which are becoming impossible for humans).

    If security is equal then that makes them worthwhile.

    --
    No sig today...
  5. Re:Love it! by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find traditional captchas to be worthless. in fact most people will avoid them and they are universally hated.
    I have several company forums that have no problems at all with spam. WE only care about US and Canada customers so we /dev/null everything outside it at the firewall and require a real login. works fantastic.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.