PSA: Image verification

[pstylesss]

Look dumbasses, the point of image verification is to make it so a computer cannot spam whatever if is you are protecting. They do not have eyes, making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form. It just pisses me the hell off. :|

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
Look dumbasses, the point of image verification is to make it so a computer cannot spam whatever if is you are protecting. They do not have eyes, making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form. It just pisses me the hell off. :|

I hate those jumbled-impossible to read ones too...is that capitalized or not dammit.

BAH, IP ban after 2 attempts...screww youu!!

 

[JohnCU]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
Look dumbasses, the point of image verification is to make it so a computer cannot spam whatever if is you are protecting. They do not have eyes, making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form. It just pisses me the hell off. :|

the fucking worst is ticketmaster, i can't even reading the fucking thing half the time.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

 

[lokiju]

Whats the site that has the cats around the letters also?

Man I hate that crap!

Sooo freaking hard to make out most of the time.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
Look dumbasses, the point of image verification is to make it so a computer cannot spam whatever if is you are protecting. They do not have eyes, making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form. It just pisses me the hell off. :|

I just hate it when:

- i, 1 and L all look like I, I and I
- you can't tell the case because the letters/number are mixed sizes and orientation anyway.
- And yeah, superimposing them on top of each other makes it generally hard to read

 

[EGGO]

Do I space or no? Do I capitalize? What are those two letters that are twirling into a vortex? Is that a wv or vvv? Maybe if I press reset...damn no difference.

 

[George P Burdell]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

Agreed. Most captchas are now vulnerable to bots.

I prefer this next generation captcha

 

[PepePeru]

Originally posted by: lokiju
Whats the site that has the cats around the letters also?

Man I hate that crap!

Sooo freaking hard to make out most of the time.

i think it was rapidshare

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
... making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form.

some would disagree

 

[Crono]

Originally posted by: lokiju
Whats the site that has the cats around the letters also?

Man I hate that crap!

Sooo freaking hard to make out most of the time.

Rapidshare, though I think they removed that annoying garbage.
I prefer the captcha math questions to the unreadable image verification stuff. Just as long as they keep it "13 + 5 =" and not advanced calculus

 

[pstylesss]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

They can do any number of things to make it more difficult to OCR besides making the text completely unreadable. If they are really worried about a script kiddie writing an OCR script with a server(s) powerful enough to run enough to cause a lot of problems, then they can put an image of a dog or a fish and tell us to type in what animal we see. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.

EDIT: Or use math questions, like Crono above said.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Trust me, it is 10x worse when you are colorblind.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
Look dumbasses, the point of image verification is to make it so a computer cannot spam whatever if is you are protecting. They do not have eyes, making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form. It just pisses me the hell off. :|

Negative.

There are readers that can identify all sorts of fonts.

I saw a site that proposed simply clicking pictures of the attractive people out of a group of ugly people, but I guess that's not PC enough for people.

Someone could easily make one that shows clip art pictures in black and white and say... for example, as to choose the picture of an animal out of a group of:
- a teapot
- a tree
- a car
- a chair
- a shoe
- a lion


Then you get to the even bigger problem... spammers can easily hire people in foreign countries (ie China) to register accounts or make posts for pennies a day.


It's more or less a battle that will never be won.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I really can't stand captcha.

 

[eplebnista]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
I really can't stand captcha.

me either

 

[pstylesss]

Originally posted by: Injury
...snip...

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

They can do any number of things to make it more difficult to OCR besides making the text completely unreadable. If they are really worried about a script kiddie writing an OCR script with a server(s) powerful enough to run enough to cause a lot of problems, then they can put an image of a dog or a fish and tell us to type in what animal we see. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.

EDIT: Or use math questions, like Crono above said.

 

[Kelvrick]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ

Originally posted by: Injury
...snip...

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

They can do any number of things to make it more difficult to OCR besides making the text completely unreadable. If they are really worried about a script kiddie writing an OCR script with a server(s) powerful enough to run enough to cause a lot of problems, then they can put an image of a dog or a fish and tell us to type in what animal we see. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.

EDIT: Or use math questions, like Crono above said.

Still too complicated. I want multiple choice. Something like 4 pictures of varying sizes.

Cat dog elephant gorilla

Which is biggest

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: Kelvrick

Still too complicated. I want multiple choice. Something like 4 pictures of varying sizes.

Cat dog elephant gorilla

Which is biggest

Multiple choice doesn't work, as a computer can randomly guess correctly 1/4 of the time.

 

[rudeguy]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
Trust me, it is 10x worse when you are colorblind.

agreed

but then again I bet it would be really bad if you were completely blind

 

[CrazyLazy]

I find the captchas that have you identify jumbled words in books to be the easiest, not to mention you are accomplishing something at the same time. Might start being unusable as technology develops though. I can't stand the cat one, takes to long to pick out and click on a zillion cat pics. If I wanted that I would go to icanhascheezburger.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ

Originally posted by: Injury
...snip...

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo

Originally posted by: ZeroIQ
making the image numbers or letters all jumbled and unreadable do not make it harder for the spambot to sign up on your damned form|

Yes, it does. It makes it considerably harder to OCR the text.

They can do any number of things to make it more difficult to OCR besides making the text completely unreadable. If they are really worried about a script kiddie writing an OCR script with a server(s) powerful enough to run enough to cause a lot of problems, then they can put an image of a dog or a fish and tell us to type in what animal we see. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.

EDIT: Or use math questions, like Crono above said.

The only downfall of math questions is that you are greatly over-rating the intelligence and attention span of possible visitors to your site. There ARE stupid people out there and you take a risk in alienating them... not saying people can't figure out 4 + 3 or something, but bot-checks are annoying enough as is... sometimes if I get one wrong (due to a typo or just not paying enough attention) I just leave the site rather than messing with it . You're also really not attacking the source of the problem unless you use a visual or word-based math problem (four apples + three apples = ? apples... where apples is either spelled out or pictures of apples.) If a program can read text on a screen, certainly it can identify a basic arithmetic problem.


One of the key problems here, as the OP suggests, is that most sites are shifting to a user-submitted content. If you make it so users can't painlessly submit their content, they simply won't do it. Even if they do it once, if it's a hassle they won't spend time giving you more content.

Even AT is kind of a hassle in that is doesn't allow the usage of free email addresses. I like it, and being a tech forum they can get away with it, but I can only imagine that a few people every day go to register and stop in their tracks because they can't use their regular email address.