Stop the Captcha madness

by Isofarro • 14 years ago

30 32 14 years ago

Albuca2• 14 years ago

I can see where they are coming from in wanting to verify that a user is Human, and getting them to play a game is a great idea.

However, that solution does not work for everyone. There are those who use smartphones, tablets, or are stuck behind corperate networks that (cannot/will not) allow you to even view or interact with the game.

I love the idea of not having to type in captcha's all the time, but the solution will have to be a universal one; making it easier for the user to verify they are human, while still keeping all the bots out.

In the meantime, at least recaptcha is doing something useful with the time we spend figuring out the captcha's.

bluetidepro• 14 years ago

"In the meantime, at least recaptcha is doing something useful with the time we spend figuring out the captcha's."

Can you elaborate? What do you mean they are doing something useful? I'm not familiar with how recaptcha works but, I have used it on many sites before.

(Thanks!)

corin_• 14 years ago

"reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly."

More at http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

zithtar2• 14 years ago

Only one of the words is actually known and used to verify humanness. The other is an unknown scan from a book, and after a certain number of identical entries (3?) is considered known.

djbender2• 14 years ago

I just tested it on a mobile device and it actually worked great. I was surprised.

camtarn5• 14 years ago

Aaaargh. Mouse dexterity testing is incredibly irritating when you're using a TrackPoint (rubber nipple mouse) :P

On a slightly more serious note, this is awful for anyone who has mouse dexterity issues, like older or inexperienced computer users, those using assistive devices, or even people with shaky hands. It also relies in some places on culturally specific assumptions (for instance: put toppings on a pizza... I see some squiggly reddish stuff which seems like it's meant to be bacon, but in the UK bacon doesn't look anything like that!)

Good on them for trying to make the CAPTCHA experience more interesting, but this isn't quite a complete solution...

nick007• 14 years ago

What about offering the option to switch to a normal CAPTCHA for users like yourself?

jerf• 14 years ago

If you can switch, so can spammers. CAPTCHAs are as strong as the weakest link.

dlikhten2• 14 years ago

TrackPoint. Now I know the name. Thank you good sir, thank you. You just made my day.

camtarn5• 14 years ago

Glad I could be of assistance ;)

emilv• 14 years ago

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/243/

dlikhten2• 14 years ago

I'm just going to leave this link over here... Not saying you should click it, but... maybe you should go to it...

http://akismet.com/

pygy_2• 14 years ago

> Mouse dexterity testing is incredibly irritating when you're using a TrackPoint (rubber nipple mouse) :P

The clit mouse is designed to be used by touch typists. You don't have to leave the home row to use it (use your thumbs to click).

If you handle it with the index while the other fingers of that hand rest on the keyboard (so that your hand is fixed), it becomes very precise.

camtarn5• 14 years ago

I do exactly what you describe - my laptop has a trackpoint and a trackpad, and I use the former because I find it more precise. However, trying to chase moving objects is very frustrating, and dragging isn't that great either.

djbender2• 14 years ago

"Increase Conversions: PlayThru increases form submissions by up to 40% versus standard CAPTCHAs like reCaptcha. That twisted text annoys people so much that they stop filling out your form. Make it easier with our short, simple games."

I would looooove to see the numbers behind this.

joshfraser• 14 years ago

Quit trying to fix CAPTCHA and just stop using them altogether. Here's my rant / explanation why: http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why-you-should-never-...

droithomme• 14 years ago

Observations from usability testing:

* It's called a game but it's just not fun. (Tried about 6 of them.)

* It's annoying to have to use the mouse in 2 dimensions with dragging. This activates the "locate, identify, capture something and drag it someplace else that needs to be identified" part of my brain. Using that part of the brain breaks my train of thought from the message I was thinking of typing.

Captchas are not perfect, and this is a good idea to try and do user testing, but I find it not be an improvement over captchas.

mikeash• 14 years ago

Reloading the demo a bunch of times, there appear to only be a handful of different games. Maybe they have a reduced set for the demo, but it certainly seems like each game would require human intervention to create. They don't look that difficult to solve automatically once a human teaches the computer what to do for the given game once. CAPTCHA relies on being able to create new puzzles with zero human effort but which require some human effort to solve. If each puzzle requires human effort to create, then attackers can simply take advantage of the fact that their time is cheaper than yours.

These sort of clever/unusual human detectors can work great on a small scale, when it isn't worth anyone's time to attack them, but fall apart once they get popular. Maybe I'm missing some secret sauce here, but this one certainly looks like one of those.

rplnt• 14 years ago

It's loading way too long - all the time benefit of not deciphering captcha was lost. It's annoying at best, trying to click on a slightly moving object and then dragging him away. Why can't I just click on a static picture? Also, it looks like an ad.

capo• 14 years ago

Solving CAPTCHAs teaches computers to read, what does this do?

camtarn5• 14 years ago

This particular implementation wouldn't do much... but if you used real images, you could ask the user to e.g. "Pick out the faces", then show six images with two known faces, three known not-faces, and one maybe-face. Serve the same maybe-face to enough users to get a significant face or not-face vote, and use the results to train a facial recognition algorithm.

geon• 14 years ago

Wasn't this demonstrated as broken a while ago?

Most of the "games" seems to be "pick 2 out of 4", which gives you only 7 permutations. But it's worse that that, since you can just keep on trying until you find a match.

gizzlon• 14 years ago

Yes! Thank you.. As a user I would love this, I hate CAPTCHAs with a passion.

joeblau• 14 years ago

Didn't someone just post an algoritm to crack these "games" with 99% efficiency a few weeks ago?

mp3geek• 14 years ago

The issue I have with these (same with keycapcha also), is the role of advertisers in captcha

http://areyouahuman.com/advertisers

After all, I don't want any form of advertising or tracking on my website due to 3rd party captchas.

mrgreenfur• 14 years ago

Doesn't CAPTCHA help transcribe old books? What does this do?

Stop the Captcha madness

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