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CAPTCHA Using Ad-Based Verification
mk1004 writes "Yahoo news has an article explaining how the text-based CAPTCHA is giving way to ad-based challenge/response. It's claimed that users are faster at responding to familiar logos, shortening the amount of time they spend proving that they are human. From the article: 'Rather than taking just a mere glance to figure out, recent studies show that a typical CAPTCHA takes, on average, 14 seconds to solve, with some taking much, much longer. Multiply that by the millions and millions of verifications per day, and Web users as a whole are wasting years and years of their lives just trying to prove they're not actually computers. This has led many companies to abandon the age-old system in favor of something not only more secure, but also easier to use for your average Webgoer: Ad-based verification, which can actually cut the time it takes to complete the task in half.'"
It's only because some company will pay to use their logo or watch their mini movie for the answer.
Heh, This is a desperate attempt to stop people like me from adblocking so we can actually use the service.
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It would be better to simply prove that the computer is used reasonably and then stop presenting the captcha's after the initial few tests. If the computer starts being detected as a spammer then it must prove again, harder this time, that it is a valid user to become reaccepted. This would save time and processing power.
A fancy rationalization of a money making scam. Nobody's wasting years of their lives doing captchas. And what about those of us who have very low exposure to advertising - how are we supposed to recognize logos?
I've examined a few of these "services". They keep track of who is using these things. Some of them even provide you with some of their data, such as a weekly or monthly report on how many people solved their question and how many failed. And some of them use cookies, allowing anybody to track your users.
They are only trying this bullshit because of Adblock. If an advertisement is required to be used to solve a question, that renders Adblock completely useless, and will force people to view crap ads they have been able to block for ages now. If the internet becomes the ad-infested crap fest that I remember from the days before Adblock Plus, and Privox, I'll disconnect from it permanently. I'm not willing to endure a deluge of ads to enjoy a service that I'm already paying a pretty penny to receive,.
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Captcha's don't take all that long to solve if they are halfway readable. Seamless web uses a method I find interesting - image recognition and classification. "Identify which items are food! Go!". I find it hard to believe speed is the issue. It seems far more likely the companies realized the combination of captive traffic in front of a desired activity was too good of an opportunity to pass up. "Our users will see an ad every time they go to rate a restaurant they recently ordered from" is a hell of a pitch.
If a person hears or reads something that they don't like (e.g. an ad) their brain will often discard it immediately. But if you can make them say it, or in this case type it, they're more likely to remember it, and even start to believe it.
This is, essentially, low-grade mind control.
Time to dump Yahoo, I only still use it for the spam filter which it has been good at but if it expects me to look at ads I will stop using it.
The news was by Yahoo, not about Yahoo. The company could still be among those planning to adopt the technology, but this isn't mentioned in the news story.
In addition to all the other posters qualms about this, I really wonder how this would work on the internet. How many brands are generally recognized around the world? Fine, you can do some localization, but still.
It seems that this will be either choosing between the logos of Coca Cola, Apple and Nike, or presenting me with an ad of the biggest, most famous mattress company in the whole US.
Complete bullshit. And you know for a fact that in no time we'd be having to answer questions about crap like "One weird secret for losing weight/Mom is 54 and looks 27". Then we'd have to watch a flash animation. And listen to a jingle....
I don't care how good your information is I won't interact with an add that you have forced upon me. I'd even give up slashdot if tomorrow I went to log in and an ad-captcha popped up. This is exactly the sort of MBA type crap that is ruining so many companies. Some douche does a spreadsheet showing how they will make x cents per user logging in with the ad-captcha. First the spreadsheet doesn't show how many customers will soon flee and second you suddenly have a new incentive to start ad-captcha'ing all over the place. First you just log people out more (a great way to lose customers because they can't be bothered to retrieve their login) and then you start putting ad-captchas between the user and just about everything. At first this will look great on the bottom line as you will probably triple your ad revenue overnight but 2 years later you are laying off 90% of your staff because you only have 10% of your readers.
The equivalent logic would apply to a grocery store putting all their prices up 20%. In the first week they would be rolling in profits due to customer inertia but by week 52 they are closed as there are so many other stores roughly 20% less.
But the worst logic is that an ad-capcha takes less time. Again MBA logic; the user is taking less time but seething the for that time and for a while after. Also keep in mind that most people (we aren't most people) don't have a clue what captchas are about but it must be something technical. But an ad everybody can understand.
So my prediction is that the best that ad-captcha sites can hope for will be that their growth will slow down; but my thinking is that most ad-captcha implementing sites will be taking it down and publicly saying that it was one of the worst decisions in the site's history.
I haven't once seen us fork slashdot to only include (fewer?) high quality stories.
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Back in 2000 I got so fed up with all the advertising on TV and radio and print, coupled with the poor quality of content and product placement, that I ceased listening to broadcast TV/radio and cancelled magazine subscriptions that are heavy in ads. I actively avoid ads and will not patronize chains that advertise movies (I'm talking to YOU, Burger King and Pizza Hut). Today I don't know the latest movie or TV show or any Lady GaGa songs, and I DON'T CARE. My personal life is so much better not being bombarded with ads.
I really despised TV news broadcasts using movie advertisements disguised as "news", and this is an advertising gimmick disguised as "security". I won't recognize most brands today, will not waste my time researching them, and will move to another web resource without flinching. Ad-based CAPTCHAs is a big fail.
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