Kill Captcha campaign

[bekdik]

Australians have started a kill Captcha campaign

The use of CAPTCHA to combat spam bots is also blocking people with disabilities and the feature should be removed from websites, argues a group of disability organisations.

The completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart, abbreviated as CAPTCHA, is a popular measure deployed by webmasters around the world to prevent spammers from automatically sending unsolicited commercial messages to sites and users. It requires people to interpret characters and numbers that are difficult for machines to parse, and enter these as part of logging in to a site, for instance.

However, the dark side of CAPTCHA is that it hinders people with vision impairments to the point that they cannot use sites. Screen readers and other accessibility tools used by blind people often fail on distorted and illegible CAPTCHA text.

It's time we started one in South Africa too.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one that gets totally frustrated when trying to access Captcha protected sites.

 

[Dolby]

I HATE those things

 

[ajax]

I HATE those things

Me too. I often can't get them right. And I am a normal person.

 

[OMB]

sorry, I won't take it off my site, my spam reduced by over 90% after I implemented it

 

[Hamish McPanji]

sorry, I won't take it off my site, my spam reduced by over 90% after I implemented it

You old mean bastid!

 

[ponder]

I have no issue with them (reCAPTCHA)and at the same time they are also providing an excellent service uncipherring old books and texts!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA

Until such time a law proclaiming death to spammers captchas can stay!

 

[Priapus]

Yes they can be difficult to read - however the more advanced ones also play audio - which does help. Personally, anything to help combat spam is good to stay in my books.

 

[Rocket-Boy]

They are there for a reason, it isnt to annoy anyone.
If people want to get rid of it then there must be a replacement technology first.

 

[rorz0r]

sorry, I won't take it off my site, my spam reduced by over 90% after I implemented it

My spam reduced 99.9% by asking "what colour is a banana" and the form only submits when you enter "yellow".

 

[koeksGHT]

Yes they can be difficult to read - however the more advanced ones also play audio - which does help. Personally, anything to help combat spam is good to stay in my books.

ReCAPTCHA yea. I don't mind it. It is unfortunate there is no spam control. Well that's the interwebz.

We do need a better method tho

 

[OMB]

My spam reduced 99.9% by asking "what colour is a banana" and the form only submits when you enter "yellow".

I hope you suggested that to RPM for the myBB registration process

 

[Adenoid Hynkel]

sorry, I won't take it off my site, my spam reduced by over 90% after I implemented it

Developers that still implement reCAPTCHA are lazy poops.

Start using honeypot fields and timestamp analysis. This is completely invisible to the user. Yet more effective against spam bots.

 

[OMB]

Developers that still implement reCAPTCHA are lazy poops.

Start using honeypot fields and timestamp analysis. This is completely invisible to the user. Yet more effective against spam bots.

who ever said I was a dev?

 

[rorz0r]

I hope you suggested that to RPM for the myBB registration process

MyBB has pretty much the same thing:

Which mobile operator has a red logo, and its name ends in ‘com’?

 

[OMB]

MyBB has pretty much the same thing:

I wouldn't know, I haven't tried registering for a while

I was referring to RPM's request after the site got accused of being racist for it's registration questions

 

[Diesal]

I have no problem with them either, although some of them can be insanely difficult, and thats what makes me angry.

 

[MKFrost]

Personally do not mind them but have any of you tried to listen to the associated voice clip?

Listen to one and try and figure it out. Understandable why disabled people cannot get past them.

 

[bekdik]

In a similar vein to that suggested by rorz0r, it would be easy to generate a random question , say some simple arithmetic, which would require some simple logic to answer. If the question was presented as a picture rather than text, it would not be easy for a spambot to enter the site.

 

[scudsucker]

Developers that still implement reCAPTCHA are lazy poops.

Start using honeypot fields and timestamp analysis. This is completely invisible to the user. Yet more effective against spam bots.

This is (partially) correct. No, devs that use reCaptcha are not lazy poops. They just are inexperienced or naive. Otherwise, YES! Making your site easy to use is so fundanentally important, and yet so many people place obstacles in the way of their users.

Blogbytes's method might be slightly harder for the developer but it is SO much easier for the user - the guy who pays our bills- that it is foolish to do anything else.

FWIW, just a honey-pot field or two has shown itself to be as effective as any Captcha I've ever used

 

[Compton_effect]

I still say - Wait for the Captcha farms.
Why have to sit and build better and smarter algorithms, when it is cheaper to hire a warehouse full of Indian or Chinese Graduates to sit and crack them for you? The rest of the work can be done by bots the old fashioned way.
Imagine renting that service out to spammers.