Why captchas really bother me sometimes
I hate spam. Who likes spam? Nobody. So I will be one of the first on board for one doing whatever they can to stop spam in its tracks.
One of the most common forms of stopping spam nowadays is the use of the captchas. Basically, it’s those boxes at the end of contact forms or comment forms on blogs that make you enter the distorted set of characters, often random, before your submission is successful.
Some of these are easy to read, and some are simply so bad a hieroglyphic specialist couldn’t figure it out. You thought the words on King Tuts tomb were hard…
But fine…maybe the characters are a little squiggly, a little blurry, etc… that is fine…but when half the character starts getting cut off…and I blow through 4 captchas because I keep getting it wrong…that starts to really annoy me.
Case in point:
Now, when looking at this, what comes to mind? For me its the following combination’s and then its all a guessing game
1. g i i 9 2
2. g j i 9 2
3. g i j 9 2
4. g j j 9 2
5. q i i 9 2
6. q j i 9 2
7. q i j 9 2
8. q j j 9 2
So 8 combination’s. I am trying to fill out a submission form here, not break into the Pentagon (that is a joke secret service).
Anyways, just wanted to vent about evil captcha’s…even though their intent is noble.
Thoughts?
Tags: captchas, protection, spam, squiggly, twisting
I agree. Captcha’s suck. I really hate the captcha’s that you outlined above with the image. I’ve started using what ExpressionEngine calls “accessible captchas” on my sites since visually impaired visitors cannot leave comments when the captcha uses images with an audio button so they can hear it.
Accessible captchas are those that will ask a question and you must fill in the blank, e.g., Is fire hot or cold?
Yea, I like those types as well. Much harder for a bot to answer those types of questions.
btw – get yourself an avatar using gravatar!
I agree, traditional captchas have issues. The reCaptcha project is a good idea and a great use of resources, but those are often harder to read than traditional captchas.
The new captchas known as logic captchas, also known as accessible captchas as Deron mention, are much easier to use and still provide the spamming protection. Don’t get too complicated on the logic though, you might make some people feel dumb.
I’ve been meaning to do that, Bryan. Thanks for reminding me. 😉