Reply to: Geek Query

[NotAllThere]

No there isn't. I've got two good degrees from a premier league university. So I can't be thick. I've got a very agile mind. Not knowing a techie question is no test of intelligence unless you want to make a career out of being a geek.

True. But the answer to this particular query was surely obvious with just a little thought.

I've noticed on here that some of the more technie geeks are pretty bad at constructing a convincing argument ...

Also true. But it isn't just the geeks who have this problem...

[bored]

Indeed - Akismet Spam has caught over 15000 spam blog comments on MrsF's website so far. She gets over 100 spam comments a day on her website, but this seems to catch most if not all of them.

Fully agree. Less pain to the users as well.

[Moscow Mule]

Somebody, somewhere is working on a different kind of scheme - something like kitten or puppy. Apparently it's quite hard for a computer to tell the difference.

Read about it on b3ta. Or the Register. Can't remember which.

HTH

[TheFaQQer]

The thing is, unless you're an organisation with an open invitation to spammers like Yahoo! Mail or Microsoft Hotmail, you don't really need anything very complex - just enough to prevent blog spam is sufficient for most purposes.

Indeed - Akismet Spam has caught over 15000 spam blog comments on MrsF's website so far. She gets over 100 spam comments a day on her website, but this seems to catch most if not all of them.

[bored]

Because if it was easy to read, a piece of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software would be able to read it, thereby defeating the whole purpose.

It's probably pretty easy to write an OCR algorithm to defeat a captcha. I think that there are OCR algorithms that recognize individual letters/words better than humans anyway. So all those captchas aren't giving any real protection compared to a "I am not a spammer" checkbox...

[Denny]

Sorry, somewhere there's a dichotomy.

No there isn't. I've got two good degrees from a premier league university. So I can't be thick. I've got a very agile mind. Not knowing a techie question is no test of intelligence unless you want to make a career out of being a geek.

I've noticed on here that some of the more technie geeks are pretty bad at constructing a convincing argument and can't see the wood for the trees.

Intelligence comes in a variety of ways.

[NickFitz]

They have. Some of the crafty spamming sods have taken to presenting captcha images elsewhere for manual input on some other pretext, and when two or three manually typed replies agree they can go back and use the matching input to get past the captcha stage in the original app. I guess the only way to prevent that is to time-limit captcha input.

to get access to free porn

About time somebody found a use for adolescent boys

so then why have the one on http://www.notagoodsite.com/ ?

For security purposes - Please enter the sum of the day number and the month number eg Day = 6 + Month = 2
Enter 8 in the box!

Apologies in advance if this is a really stupid question!

It serves the same purpose as a CAPTCHA, but is accessible to blind or partially-sighted people. It's also quite a bit simpler to implement.

The thing is, unless you're an organisation with an open invitation to spammers like Yahoo! Mail or Microsoft Hotmail, you don't really need anything very complex - just enough to prevent blog spam is sufficient for most purposes.

Jeff Attwood has, for at least a couple of years, been asking every visitor to type in the word "orange", and that seems to be quite enough for his needs.

One friend of mine had a checkbox you had to tick to say "I am not a spammer" - worked a treat.

But there's lots of people who are somehow convinced that if they don't have some preposterously complicated bit of overkill in everybody's way, the Evil Foreign Pill Peddlers will spam them to hell and back. Hello, people, your website is not that significant

[NotAllThere]

Why is it that we have to type in those funny security words and letters whenever we want to sign up to anything? Why are they written in such an odd, skewed way they are hardly readable at all?

I'm so bright I need to wear shades when I look in the mirror, so there!

Sorry, somewhere there's a dichotomy.

[OwlHoot]

Because if it was easy to read, a piece of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software would be able to read it, thereby defeating the whole purpose.

Although some of them nowadays are quite ridiculous... and any serious spammer will devise ways around them, anyway.

They have. Some of the crafty spamming sods have taken to presenting captcha images elsewhere for manual input on some other pretext, and when two or three manually typed replies agree they can go back and use the matching input to get past the captcha stage in the original app. I guess the only way to prevent that is to time-limit captcha input.

[Denny]

It's called captcha.

It's so that robots / screenscarpers etc. can't keep signing up automatically as they need some kind of manual check. I used to have it on my wiki, but I kept forgetting that I needed to type a word in each time, so gave up in the end.

Since no-one ever visits it, there wasn't much point

A CAPTCHA (IPA: /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human.

Did they think it would be read by the family cat then?

[BrilloPad]

Because if it was easy to read, a piece of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software would be able to read it, thereby defeating the whole purpose.

Although some of them nowadays are quite ridiculous... and any serious spammer will devise ways around them, anyway.

so then why have the one on http://www.itcontractor.com/ ?

For security purposes - Please enter the sum of the day number and the month number eg Day = 6 + Month = 2
Enter 8 in the box!

Apologies in advance if this is a really stupid question!

[NickFitz]

but why does it have to bbe soooo difficult to read? usually takes me several goes...

Because if it was easy to read, a piece of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software would be able to read it, thereby defeating the whole purpose.

Although some of them nowadays are quite ridiculous... and any serious spammer will devise ways around them, anyway.

[TheFaQQer]

but why does it have to bbe soooo difficult to read? usually takes me several goes...

Generally, there is a parameter to provide (if it's an image) that details how scrambled the image needs to be. If enough users complain, then they may change it.

I demoed a system to the Scottish Executive a couple of years back, and it took 10 attempts to log in. They suggested we make the images a bit easier to read.

[BrilloPad]

Why is it that we have to type in those funny security words and letters whenever we want to sign up to anything? Why are they written in such an odd, skewed way they are hardly readable at all?

what a good question - did sasguru suggest it?

actually I dont think he did - r thread would have been in technical...

[BrilloPad]

It's called captcha.

It's so that robots / screenscarpers etc. can't keep signing up automatically as they need some kind of manual check. I used to have it on my wiki, but I kept forgetting that I needed to type a word in each time, so gave up in the end.

Since no-one ever visits it, there wasn't much point

but why does it have to bbe soooo difficult to read? usually takes me several goes...