questions → do those captcha things actually work?

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Do those CAPTCHA things actually work?

Seeing the increase of persistent spam here making me think that there are bots being used to post, do those CAPTCHA things work to stop or slow down bots? Could we have that added on the deals adder to stop the spam, or at least make them work a little harder? What does the collective conscience here think?

by catbertthegreat
asked 2 years ago

8 Answers answer

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vote-for5vote-against

I read up on this last year and the answer is NO.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/22/microsoft_live_captcha_bypass/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=863

hobbit
2 years ago

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I've actually read that some bots will strip the CAPTCHA image and repost it on one of several Pr0n-y sites they've set up.

A visitor to that site is then presented the CAPTCHA before being granted access to.... well, you know.

Then the bot feeds that answer back to the site that originally had the CAPTCHA.

That way the perpetrators don't need to worry about computing power or paying anyone/spending their own time.

anotherhiggins
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

@anotherhiggins: ewwwwwwwwwwww that is nasty

hobbit
2 years ago

vote-for5vote-against

@anotherhiggins: This is accurate. There are also boiler room kinds of places in some countries where people do nothing but sit at a screen and answer these (in some cases, this is cheaper than a bot, sadly).

The only thing that captcha things do is to frustrate people who have difficulty typing, or seeing, or both. Unless I really need to use a specific site, I boycott places that use them. It's one of the (many) reasons I pulled money out of BofA. I like two-factor authentication. I hate stupid pet tricks, and that's what I think of captcha and related tricks. Stupid.

shrdlu
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

@hobbit: Twisted, devious, evil.... but clever.

anotherhiggins
2 years ago

vote-for4vote-against

Dang, I hoped they were useful instead of annoying. Thanks @hobbit, @anotherhiggins and @shrdlu for the answers. I learned something today.

catbertthegreat
2 years ago

vote-for2vote-against

@catbertthegreat: there are more recent articles about the bots and captcha those were just two I picked, I was really too lazy to search hard. I am supposed to be working.

hobbit
2 years ago

vote-for1vote-against

it has even gotten more evil......they are paying people to solve those things now this is from twitter
Spammers Paying Others to Solve Captchas http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26captcha.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes
I added this to the other discussion too

hobbit
2 years ago

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