The "I hate capchas" rant

[3rdalbum]

Capchas - they're designed to stop computers from being able to read them, but they're virtually impossible for humans to read now!

The most common one, and the most annoying, are the "Stop spam. Read books." ones, because they always look warped and are nonsensical words, which doesn't help comprehension. You end off hitting the "Refresh" button three or four times just to get one that's marginally readable.

I remember the one that was used on Ubuntu Brainstorm, that was made from ASCII art. The H looked like an X and there was always a particular character I couldn't understand. It took me about 20 tries before I could log in.

And yesterday when I wanted to register for a website, I had to go through a RIDICULOUS amount of hassle! There were two capchas, a popup menu where you had to select "Yes" if you were a human being, AND it didn't allow you to register using a webmail account "due to spammers".

This is just utterly ridiculous. I'm sure there's a better way to stop spammers than these indecipherable capchas. They are the bane of my internet existence. I think in future I'll try using audio capchas wherever provided, but who knows when they'll be muddied up with static and background noises, and my hearing isn't too good!

[edin9]

They're not so bad unless they put the letters/numbers on a patterned background or something like that, then they're the worst thing ever.

[Tipped OuT]

Capchas - they're designed to stop computers from being able to read them, but they're virtually impossible for humans to read now!

The most common one, and the most annoying, are the "Stop spam. Read books." ones, because they always look warped and are nonsensical words, which doesn't help comprehension. You end off hitting the "Refresh" button three or four times just to get one that's marginally readable.

I remember the one that was used on Ubuntu Brainstorm, that was made from ASCII art. The H looked like an X and there was always a particular character I couldn't understand. It took me about 20 tries before I could log in.

And yesterday when I wanted to register for a website, I had to go through a RIDICULOUS amount of hassle! There were two capchas, a popup menu where you had to select "Yes" if you were a human being, AND it didn't allow you to register using a webmail account "due to spammers".

This is just utterly ridiculous. I'm sure there's a better way to stop spammers than these indecipherable capchas. They are the bane of my internet existence. I think in future I'll try using audio capchas wherever provided, but who knows when they'll be muddied up with static and background noises, and my hearing isn't too good!

Yeah, they're pretty bad and annoying. But it's to help stop spamming and advertising bots. Sometimes you got to do, what you got to do.

[armageddon08]

I love capchas.

[edin9]

http://i33.tinypic.com/29mk67b.jpg

[Cuddles McKitten]

I can't even imagine how awful they are if you're colorblind or otherwise visually impaired. To help out those people, websites should just put "I ALWAYS LIE" at the top, so bots blow up when loading the page.

[pwnst*r]

I love capchas.

same. i have a captcha fetish.

[running_rabbit07]

I just wish that they'd work better for weeding out spambots.

[orngjce223]

http://i33.tinypic.com/29mk67b.jpg

Yeah, that's KON1TUB. Captcha-reader, at your service. Heh.

[The Funkbomb]

I hate them too. Especially the ones that warp and smush letters together into gibberish. Impossible to figure out.

The sad thing is, they aren't even using computers to read them any longer. I read a story about how some spammers are enlisting people to decipher capchas, unbeknownst to the users. I can't remember how it works exactly but it's some sort of spyware where people think it's a valid capcha but all that information gets fed back to the spammers. Then they create a database of images and what the victim typed in. Using this system, making it so computers can't read it doesn't even work.

[3rdalbum]

Yeah, that's KON1TUB. Captcha-reader, at your service. Heh.

I guess we'll never know if you're right!

[wulfgang]

http://i33.tinypic.com/29mk67b.jpg
The K and the 0 are almost parallel. That is difficult to tell the difference on which to use first.:mad:

[SunnyRabbiera]

Capchas are annoying indeed

[-grubby]

It's possible to do Captchas correctly, in particular look at Google's captchas for an example. But most captchas are terrible, especially recaptcha

[HappyFeet]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2374/2269029028_acb1c52622.jpg?v=0
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2298/2268237663_f7b8775f4a.jpg?v=0
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/2268237733_cda4a1dbb3.jpg?v=0
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2266/2268237679_4bef97f9b0.jpg?v=0

[Exodist]

They're not so bad unless they put the letters/numbers on a patterned background or something like that, then they're the worst thing ever.
Newer ones are actualy starting to get much worse tho.

I like the number math ones, easy to ready and simple math.

[Exodist]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/2268237733_cda4a1dbb3.jpg?v=0


This made me almost **** my self laughing.. :lolflag:

[SomeGuyDude]

I can't even imagine how awful they are if you're colorblind or otherwise visually impaired. To help out those people, websites should just put "I ALWAYS LIE" at the top, so bots blow up when loading the page.

As a colorblind individual, I can attest that a lot of these things are nightmares. Some sites I just have to give up on entirely because they use a captcha system that I absolutely cannot figure out.

[Jekshadow]

One much simpler task, which is easier for humans and harder for bots is to show a picture of a basic object (like an apple, a boat or a cat) and ask "What is this?". Any human over the age of 5 will be able answer the question easily.

Heres a good one btw:

http://imgur.com/0LEnw.png

and just the evil captcha:

http://random.irb.hr/latexrender/pictures/168e969e0e2c71f49103f9fe0ee5fed9.gif

[scragar]

One much simpler task, which is easier for humans and harder for bots is to show a picture of a basic object (like an apple, a boat or a cat) and ask "What is this?". Any human over the age of 5 will be able answer the question easily.


There is a site I know of that has the entire captcha system replaced by a series of about 400 revolving questions, all of them very simple, but done so that a machine could never understand them.

A four digit code contains how many numbers?

The World Wide Web is commonly abbreviated to 3 letters, what are they?

Which is faster, a cheetah or a snail?
If you wanted a machine to pass all of these tests you would need to take some serious effort, but a human has no problems understanding the meaning of the question, and other than a select few questions which are all really obvious anyway the answer is given in them all.