Comments on: Why CAPTCHA Sucks and What to do About it

By: su

su — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:36:55 +0000

I used to just loathe and despise captcha. But now I want to go on an active crusade against them. I was trying to leave a compliment for a firm and found I could not get past the captcha. This one was worse than any I had ever seen, so I started taking screen shots of the variations. They are now using *foreign language characters* that I even can’t FIND on my keyboard, blurry photos of house numbers, and EVEN using typographic ligatures (where two letters like “fl” are combined into one character). Using ligatures, meant to increase readability, as captcha is an Abomination in the Eyes of God.

By: David

David — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:48:05 +0000

PS I agree with Owen. Who ever invented CAPTCHA should be shot for being stupid.

By: David

David — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:47:19 +0000

I think CAPTCHA is the most ignorant waste of time that ever hit the internet. Not to mention how immature, annoying and obnoxious it is. I hate having my time wasted like that.

By: Owen

Owen — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:11:52 +0000

Whoever invented Captcha should be shot

By: Glenroy

Glenroy — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:00:09 +0000

i don’t understand how site owners haven’t realized yet that Captcha is a turn off.
I’ve given up trying to communicate with sites that use it.
Most of the time I can,t read the damn thing!

By: Max

Max — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:00:30 +0000

I have 3 very busy sites for comments and none use any form of capture. We get zero spam bot posts and very few garbage posts as the content is heavily filtered. There is only one downside, you cant post at my sites without javascript and cookies enabled. There are no friendly messages except for valid email, if your post does not pass filtering we make you think it has. The idea behind our filtering is that genuine posters get it right fist time and those with alcohol on their breath make mistakes.
The internet is awash with keyboard warriors angry people and dumb kids. Applying filters that are tailored to your sites content are essential to keeping the important visitors happy.
Any site that hits me with a Captcha I cant read gets itself on the no go list. I don’t waste a minute of my time trying to identify distorted characters that are made worse by me having to wear reading glasses.

By: amar

amar — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:51:57 +0000

I wish they would come up with an easier to comprehend verification. Captcha sometimes feels like SAT once again.

By: Chris Ivey

Chris Ivey — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:02:14 +0000

I agree that CAPTCHAs are overused. Some people are getting smart about handling registration and comment spam, (I like the Disqus solution), but in some cases you absolutely need a reverse Turing test.

I developed a prototype system based on the semantic associations humans intuit between objects, and eventually we evolved a product, now in beta called “VouchSafe”. I would be interested in your reaction and comments.

By: el Presidente

el Presidente — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:59:54 +0000

Well, as is the case with almost everything human, the reason of the annoyance you experience, in particular with reCAPTCHA (the one with the two word verification), is … what else, MONEY.
When you type the two words, ONLY ONE is used for verification, and the other is a service you unknowingly and unwillingly provide FOR FREE, because what you are really doing is helping them to electronically type scanned words of real life books in the process of being made into e-books! The words that the scanning technology can’t recognize and save as typeface automatically, they put into the CAPTCHA for you to oblige!
Since you typed correctly the other word (usually a non-existing one), they “take your word” for the other to be correct as well, and store it to their data base.
So,FOOL THEM!
Write the non existing word correctly, and instead of the other word (or numeral, or math-type, or non-English type), insert whatever you like: 40 letters long gibberish, offending words, the good old “CAPTCHAsucks!”, or, if you’re in a hurry, just a plain dot (or any single letter) will do. Just make sure that the two words are separated by a space, (and don’t use any other spaces in your gibberish)
Try it!

By: john

john — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:29:06 +0000

Captcha got even worst because now they have included foreign punctuation marks and lines through the words. The fact this has occurred along mostly likely indicates captcha fails along with your advice on a 5 layer spam filter also probably indicates that website developers do a very poor job of blocking spam.
Not that I guess it’s really fair to blame you because it’s not simply web forms but the entire internet which has become inundated with spam. The average search on bing/google produces ehow,ezine,maholol,yahoo answers, wiki, top10sites, et cetra. 90 percent of searches result in spam sites that provide almost no useful information. The internet now reminds me of a typical street in the Bronx lined with pawn shops, cash checking centers and trash.