Ask HN: What is going on with Captchas ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973960

by Murkin • 17 years ago

1 4 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Am I the only one going insane ? Today I decided to try the app developed by a fellow HN member. After failing 3 times to enter the captcha, I gave up.

And this is not the first time this happens. If I am having trouble, how many other users are stopped by the gate ?

Can anyone recommend a good (as in readable) free-captcha generator ?

Or maybe its just me (http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg) ?

Murkin2• 17 years ago

The captcha that blocked me: http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Part of the problem there is that in some fonts there's very little difference between a "q" and a "9". So that's either "qA726F" of "9A726F". Either way, I didn't find that one very difficult, and if the others were similar, I wouldn't've expected a problem. A side point is, of course, that most CAPTCHAs of this style don't actually need to be that complicated.

That fact that you had a problem does show that this style of CAPTCHA has to be deprecated.

People are reporting that hidden fields with names that suggest they are necessary - and hence get completed by robots - are very effective, as are simple questions in natural language. Point is, currently they're not common, so spammers haven't yet had the motivation to crack them.

entelarust• 17 years ago

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rat...

Murkin2• 17 years ago

Not a very serious study. If he allowed forms to be processed even if captcha failed, he could of known how many of the failures were indeed legit clients. This way, it might of just been bots and the 2-3% change just a normal deviation.

Ask HN: What is going on with Captchas ?

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