I am seeing more things that want you to solve an almost illegible (sometimes totally illegible) phrase or word before you can send a message. They say its to help decipher old texts or something but if you don't do it to their satisfaction you can't send the message, supposed to eliminate spam. I guess I am just too dense to understand but I do know that I really dislike any adds or business that uses them, Does anyone else agree that it is really dumb, if not pls explain how it eliminates spam.
I hate these Captcha things. They do work to keep Spambots from registering. But. For whatever reason my brain has a really hard time deciphering the blurry images used for these Captcha things.
If your brain is having a hard time deciphering it, imagine how hard of a time a computer would have interpreting it. My understanding is they give you a known word, and an unknown word, so it assumes that if you get the known word right, then it will add your interpretation of the unknown word to it's database, resulting in a constantly growing database of image/word pairs. All this, while helping to cut back on spam, I think it's win-win.
That being said, I have seen some academic papers where people have applied machine learning techniques combined with image processing techniques to build a Captcha solver.
The spammers mostly just beat the Captcha by using low paid workers in India, the PI and other low wage places.
I'm a moderator on a 40,000+ member electric RC forum site. My main job there is thumping spammers. We implemented a Captcha system and the bots went away. Then came the low paid humans.
Right now India is the source of most of our spammers. Followed closely by China and the PI.
I'm a moderator on a 40,000+ member electric RC forum site. My main job there is thumping spammers. We implemented a Captcha system and the bots went away. Then came the low paid humans.
Right now India is the source of most of our spammers. Followed closely by China and the PI.
Typically you only need to get the first word right, for those double word Captchas.
