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Computer Literacy Tests: Are You Human?

time.com — Every web surfer, has been forced to stop and perform this weird little task: look at a picture of some wavy, ghostly, distorted letters and type them into a box. By correctly transcribing it, you have proved to the computer that you are a human being.

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  • atdigg, on 06/08/2008, -21/+4cry again?
  • DigitalHippie73, on 06/09/2008, -19/+4Great article, very interesting.
  • Enroth, on 06/09/2008, -15/+55"When its scanners find a word they can't read, they automatically turn it into a CAPTCHA that gets exported to a website in need of one. A human reads it and transcribes it, and the results get sent back to the scanner and added to the archive"
    There has to be someone looking at the word before it is turned into a captcha otherwise it would defeat the purpose of the captcha (how would the program know if you had entered in the correct letters if it doesn't know them)
    • stefankoegl, on 06/09/2008, -1/+28On the presumption, that most clients will enter the right text for the image, they can accept the first few entries for each image and check the rest against the majority of entries that have already been entered.
    • S1ngular1ty1, on 06/09/2008, -0/+46"But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct."
      • rodrigo74, on 06/09/2008, -0/+4I was wondering the same one of these days, thanks for clarifying!
    • MellerTime, on 06/09/2008, -0/+20The ones I've seen (from http://recaptcha.net/) have consisted of two words. Presumably one word is already known, another is potentially a word needing to be learned. You still have to get the known word correct in order to pass the test, but the second non-known word's value is stored to be verified by others later on.

      Edit: Looks like S1ngular1ty1 got to the same conclusion as I did through a FAQ entry...
    • ElbertF, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9It shows two words; one is known, the other is not. You have to enter both, but only one has to be correct.

      http://recaptcha.net/
    • shertzerj, on 06/09/2008, -0/+12Don't know why you're getting dugg down, I thought it was a valid question.
      • Enroth, on 06/09/2008, -1/+9Most questions are buried (I don't know why, its as if Digg on the whole is against people learning), but if I get an answer I don't care.
        Thankyou everyone that answered.
      • rayraym0fucka, on 06/09/2008, -6/+2Asking a question means you're stupid- we hate stupid people at digg ;p

        Yes, that was sarcasm.
  • alpha88, on 06/09/2008, -1/+151And then there's the Rapidshare CAPTCHA. The worst and most extreme of all CAPTCHA images. So difficult, it takes most humans at least two tries before getting it correct. It gives you multiple letters, but you must choose only 4 which have a cat symbol beside them. Thank ***** for "Happy Hour" when no CAPTCHA is needed.
    • Samas11, on 06/09/2008, -1/+36Couldn't agree with you more alpha88 - and the cat images are so twisted and distorted they look exactly the same as the ones with dogs!! ARG!!!
      • alpha88, on 06/09/2008, -0/+26THE OTHER ONES HAVE DOGS?

        I honestly couldn't tell what those mangled piles of pixels were.
      • ayeroxor, on 06/09/2008, -3/+2It's easy- just look for the tails and ears. Only the cat has a tail coming out pretty far and straight; the dog has the a short curved tail. And the cat's ears stick out pretty well also.
    • Stavrosian, on 06/09/2008, -2/+34I guess it works though. I was getting so annoyed with that ***** captcha that I purchased premium.
      • Reiben, on 06/09/2008, -2/+30Thats the idea...
        • Stavrosian, on 06/09/2008, -7/+12Hence the "I guess it works" comment...
      • ayeroxor, on 06/09/2008, -4/+3Nobody had defined what "it" was, so it was a little confusing...
      • steviesteveo, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2I actively try and avoid rapidshare because of the unfairly difficult argument for upgrading that their CAPTCHA is, it's got so bad that I'll rather get a mirror of a popular file ANYWHERE else online.

        I never put files onto rapidshare for the same reason - no one will be able to get them off.
    • webkami, on 06/09/2008, -0/+23A sample for those who never seen one.
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazzarello/2434405650 ...
    • S1ngular1ty1, on 06/09/2008, -1/+1They suck pretty bad.
    • Rozza, on 06/09/2008, -0/+8i had one of those stupid cat things, http://imgplace.com/image/view/d5dfefd04145b403713 ...
      lol cats would be proud
    • Vertabreaker, on 06/09/2008, -0/+3Yeah RapidShare is pretty bad, but I think ticketmaster is 100 time worse.
    • jasdf, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9It took me 7 tries last night to get that one. Once I figured out that some letters had dogs, and that the dogs had pointy tails I was able to get it.
    • nVoy, on 06/09/2008, -0/+10The ***** Captcha is the worst security feature ever implemented. What a ***** hassle. It's only right they compensate with "happy hours". If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
    • jxfallout, on 06/09/2008, -1/+8I'm amazed that so many people still host things on RapidShare when there's many much better alternatives (MediaFire, DivShare, MegaUpload, etc...). Many of which don't have CAPTCHA (and if they do, they're REALLY simple to read; such as MegaUpload).
      • foltaggio, on 07/11/2008, -0/+3Ugh, megaupload. Another site pressuring you into getting their premium services. I'll pass.
      • alpha88, on 06/09/2008, -0/+3Mediafire is by far the best.
    • Crisender111, on 06/09/2008, -0/+10A little tip to decipher the RS CAPTCHA

      Cats are sitting, Dogs are standing.

      But they still ***** suck. Damn you Rapidshare.
      • imontoya, on 06/10/2008, -0/+2Look for two eyes, too. Cats have two eyes, dogs have one eye.
    • zeabu, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9After downloading lots of porn you get used to them.. In fact I know half of them by heart.
  • Dipeksounds, on 06/09/2008, -2/+45I hate those rapidshare type the image, with those ridiculous cats and dogs, blegh.
    • D14BL0, on 06/09/2008, -0/+7It used to just be "Enter the following letters", then "Enter the letters with a cat on them", then "Enter the letters with a cat standing up (NOT SITTING DOWN!)".

      I'm afraid of what they'll do next time.
      • markr, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9You will have to literally enter a cat while you are standing up
        • directrix13, on 06/09/2008, -0/+4Bestiality CAPTCHA?
        • D14BL0, on 06/09/2008, -0/+3Fitting if you consider some of the things I find on RapidShare...
  • rypic7, on 06/09/2008, -1/+115too bad half of the CAPTCHAs i run into are too distorted for even a human to decipher.
    • qbsean10, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1I'm glad I'm not the only one who's like this.
  • chungyc, on 06/09/2008, -0/+31At this rate, it won't be the military or academics, but rather spam that becomes the impetus for sentient artificial intelligence ...
  • CDoug03, on 06/09/2008, -4/+10I like the CAPTCHAs with farm animals much better. Look out sheep, here I come!
  • S1ngular1ty1, on 06/09/2008, -12/+4¿uıɐƃɐ ʎɹʇ
  • magawake, on 06/09/2008, -3/+24Anyone ever use the CAPTCHAs for RapidShare, where you have to type where you see a 'cat'? Its impossible !
  • IJS209, on 06/09/2008, -4/+4those things are so annoying.
  • over9k, on 06/09/2008, -1/+65Rapidshare's captcha is so effective, even humans can't get it right most of the time.
  • gcman94, on 06/09/2008, -18/+5I tHiNk Th@t Th££$e @rE R£@LLY @nNoYiNG, d0nT Y0U?¿
  • laserblazer, on 06/09/2008, -11/+5This subject is remarkably impervious to wit. Every time a captcha story comes up I sit here for five minutes coughing out lame jokes and then backspacing them.

    SCREW YOU CAPTCHAS
    • luchid, on 06/09/2008, -0/+6I'd say "screw the spammers" that forced us all to have to use captchas.
      • laserblazer, on 06/09/2008, -1/+4Yes, they suck. SCREW YOU SPAMMERS, LOVE YOU CAPTCHAS
  • carlnewton, on 06/09/2008, -1/+6What happened to that idea of photo's of cats? Did that ever take off? I know Microsoft have the asirra thing but I've never seen it used anywhere. Looks like the most effective and easiest method to me.
  • Kyrgizion, on 06/09/2008, -0/+20"Please solve global worldhunger, add a theorem about the vector field of Hawking Radiation in a closed system, prove that entropy always increases in said system, and enter below the missing chemical bases needed to cure cancer. Thank you."
    • steviesteveo, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2Haha, I'm imagining the expression on the porn starved downloader's face.
  • theradical, on 06/09/2008, -3/+71Good job summing up the wikipedia page, Time.com.
  • mal1964, on 06/09/2008, -0/+5RMG Technologies outsourced the captcha typing to workers in India whose software gives ticket brokers the ability to quickly navigate the Ticketmaster website and snatch up blocks of tickets as they go on sale.
    http://www.ticketnews.com/RMG-Technologies-claims- ...
  • sexMeUp, on 06/09/2008, -4/+13Its articles like these that make me want to masterbate at the end of a ***** day.
  • Gullop, on 06/09/2008, -0/+16http://recaptcha.net/
    • D14BL0, on 06/09/2008, -0/+6I love ReCAPTCHA. I've been using it on my blog. The fact that it helps support book digitizing is a major plus. Even if the letters are hard to read, I like knowing that me and my commenters are help supporting a good project.
    • Mokacoffay, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1I get the weirdest words out of ReCAPTCHA.. like.. Penetrate?
  • Kryuel, on 06/09/2008, -1/+8Once when registering for a site the captcha was a triangle. There were no letters. I went crazy trying to guess what it was.
    • sexMeUp, on 06/09/2008, -0/+0recaptcha is funded by the bilderberg group
  • dudefather, on 06/09/2008, -1/+32which would you prefer:
    A: A puppy (the bad kind)
    B: A pretty flower from your sweetie
    C: A large properly formatted data file
    • NecroDigg, on 06/09/2008, -0/+19I'm sure every digger would say C.
    • xenoputtss, on 06/09/2008, -0/+14Is the puppy mechanical in any way?
      NO, it is the bad kind of puppy!!
      Then B!
      Correct, C would have also been acceptable.
      • aldableep3, on 06/09/2008, -3/+8don't mean to nitpick, but u got B and C mixed up in your last two lines.. futurama ftw
  • tama00, on 06/09/2008, -3/+16funny this was mentioned, youtubes capatcha got cracked today looks whats starting to happen!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqYe3ej5xo
    • Anonymous3, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9Nothing wrong there!
      In related news, half of the Philippines apparently decided to join youtube yesterday.
    • malanic, on 06/09/2008, -0/+5I don't know why someone buried you. That's outrageous. 28,000 views and almost 4,000 spam bot comments in one day.
  • serendipitously, on 06/09/2008, -3/+4All of these tests whether based on visual recognition or sound could run afoul of discrimination law which are supposed to make reasonable accommodations for human beings with impairment. I don't know how it would work though. Whilst they have voice activated computers which obey commands for those who can't type, I am not sure how that would work for those with other challenges.
    • zeabu, on 06/09/2008, -2/+2So ***** the impaired. If it's choosing between allowing spambots and impaired, and blocking both, sorry, that's the way it is.
    • RevEng, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1Actually, most CAPTCHAs have alternatives specifically for those with impairments. Generally, it consists of the main CAPTCHA being visual, with the alternative being an audio file of the letters being spoken.

      I do wonder though how difficult it is to crack the audio version. After all, text-to-speech has been around for a long time, and for something as simple as individual letters, it should be quite reliable.
  • chris9902, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2It's crazy how far some people take this idea. Most of the time I can't even read them and just give up.
  • sexMeUp, on 06/09/2008, -11/+0someone piss one me
  • chrgrose, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1Not only are they incredibly annoying, but, as in the case of youtube.com, they are IMPOSSIBLE to get correct.. Apparently after 2 or 3 tries it still says you entered it incorrectly but lets you submit your comment anyway.
  • yayintertubes, on 06/09/2008, -0/+9Digg users need to be told what a captcha is? What's next, "Sending e-mail for Dummies"?
  • roomforpanic, on 06/09/2008, -0/+26I signed up for something the other day and the CAPTCHA said 'Rick Astley'
  • bj1989, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1Signing up for websites needs a redesign. They can keep making it more complicated but unfortunately it won't stop spammers.
  • qqqiao23, on 06/09/2008, -1/+0that's interesting...
  • ayeroxor, on 06/09/2008, -4/+31"Every web surfer, has been forced to stop and perform this weird little task"

    Is the task entitled, "Figure out why the ***** you put a comma there?"
    • NecroDigg, on 06/09/2008, -15/+3Are you seriously nitpicking about comma placement?

      You suck.
      • ayeroxor, on 06/09/2008, -2/+7Are you seriously nitpicking about nitpicking about comma placement, all the while thinking you're better than me?

        You're hilarious.
    • sickanimations, on 06/09/2008, -1/+8Maybe he speaks like that little black kid from "Malcom in the Middle".
  • Zaggynl, on 06/09/2008, -0/+11"It's nice to know we humans are still good for something"

    ..buried
  • GordonClass, on 06/09/2008, -6/+1I hate having to figure out puzzels just to post. Damn had to do it for this reply..........
  • seanieb, on 06/09/2008, -1/+18Spam emails have a higher success rate at getting past several spam filters if they come form a legitimate source (such as Google or Yahoo), spammers outsourced this problem to asian CAPTCHA sweat shops, where human would spend their entire day filling out captcha to webmail accounts so the spammers could register.

    This works, but even the cheap cost of Asian labour was too much of an over head for these spammers. There is/was (allegedly, I think I saw this in a google talk or TED talk) an online marketing company who’s main income was from sending spam emails. They set about using humans to do the image processing that their computers could not do, cracking the CAPTCHA's. But with one big difference, they wanted to do this for a little money as possible. They came up with an incentive based system, so that normal people would type in the CAPTCHA's for them, but on a massive scale. So the company went about setting up a pornagrahic website at a low, once of cost, this site had lots of content for free, after a user had view the site for a number of minutes a pop would emerge. “To continue viewing the site please fill this in”. The user was show a Google or a Yahoo CAPTCHA . The user would then fill it in, doing so several times during the duration of a visit. This proved a cheap and highly reliable way of bypassing CAPTCHA and working around todays image processing limitations.

    Spammers are inginuitive and it really is an arms race, as long as there is money to be made, people will continue to try and game the systme.
    • ahtu, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2We used to have a community of people who wanted to use bots in Runescape like 5 years ago and we had the exact same system back then.
      Someone wrote a program that would take a snapshot of the CAPTCHA that the game throws at you when you're doing something for a long time and it would get sent to someone who had tagged themselves as online and he would type in the CAPTCHA and the program would send the answer to the player using the bot.

      You would get points for typing them correctly and if you didn't have enough points you would get kicked out for freeloading.

      It's not a very effective way to stop people abusing websites at all. With more computing power every day, it'll become useless not too long from now.
      • steviesteveo, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2It's a shame people were cheating at a browser game that a lot of young children were playing, tbh.

        Bots are particularly awkward because it means that you never have to stop levelling, so no one can possibly beat you.
  • fLUx1337, on 06/09/2008, -3/+1They ain't "Computer Literacy Tests", they are Retard Tests.....AND WE ALL FAIL!!!

    I do at least.
  • mamboboy, on 06/09/2008, -3/+1Captcha is pretty much killing off certain websites, Myspace for one. But the spam was too, so it's a lose - lose situation it seems.

    A majority of humans (especially the social networking generation) lack the brain span and are far too lazy to type in a few letters, so they counteract the 'problem' by not bothering to send messages or post bulletins, which is fine by me as it proves what they'd planned on sending in the first place was probably just a load of crap.

    Personally, CAPTCHA doesn't bother me too much. I've seen a few annoying ones (rapidshare for one) but on the whole, any ~6 year old is capable of doing them with ease...
    • RevEng, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1You make a lot of unfounded claims here. I'm not a regular on Myspace myself, but I know several people who are, and I certainly have not seen a decline in their usage of Myspace. I also rarely hear complaints about CAPTCHAs.

      I also don't know anybody who has ever given up on sending a message because it was too difficult or inconvenient to fill out the CAPTCHA. I've heard people swear at them in frustration when they got them wrong once or twice, but I've never seen them give up entirely.

      If you're going to make radical claims like that, I'd hope to see some research to back it up.
  • Canadian0207, on 06/09/2008, -0/+16but have you even read spam emails these days?

    99% of them don't even make any sense. They're just garbled up text with a link at the bottom. I'm surprised ppl still fall for this.
  • NecroDigg, on 06/09/2008, -0/+44How long does it take to download a 1MB file from rapidshare?



    10 Minutes. 1 minute to download and 9 minutes trying to figure out the ***** captcha.
    • itcoll, on 06/09/2008, -4/+1u stole the words from my mouth , pal .
    • monkeymagnus, on 06/09/2008, -7/+0it takes you a minute to download 1MB????
    • steviesteveo, on 06/09/2008, -0/+410 seconds to download, 9.50 minutes to figure out the captcha and 2 hours to wait for the system to reset once you've got the captcha wrong too many times.
  • JangoFett, on 06/09/2008, -0/+13Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
  • buzzair, on 06/09/2008, -0/+0They might soon involve identifying animals or listening to a sound file--anything computers aren't good at.

    I hope they don't use sound files because then deaf people won't be able to access the site.
    • minigig, on 06/09/2008, -0/+3what about the blind with the current Captcha , only some sites give audio links
      • yayintertubes, on 06/09/2008, -0/+5***** em, blind people don't click ads.
        • steviesteveo, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2I'd never considered that, it's sick but I suspect someone's worked out the cost benefit analysis of that "market segment"

          Although, can we all accept that the buzzing mosquito advert is the most retardly annoying thing which has yet been developed. If you open a few links in tabs to work through you don't know which one is buzzing loudly.
  • usuallyjusta, on 06/09/2008, -0/+2So apparently i'm not human......
  • senorcool, on 06/09/2008, -0/+19relevant comic:
    http://www.handrooster.com/comics/20070427.gif
  • itcoll, on 06/09/2008, -1/+1rapidshare is the worst of all . asking to enter words with a cat on them .where the hell do they get these ideas???
  • Sphurthy, on 06/09/2008, -1/+0It is required to avoid spam. But sometimes they are very confusing - to avoid these the CAPTCHA providers must specify a guideline to enter the word - like if the text is all alphabet, all capital, all small, alpha numeric etc
  • Ge64, on 06/09/2008, -8/+1that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard, how will the server check if the user's captcha is correct if it can't read it and therefore doesn't know the answer? if it gets confirmed by another human, it either defeats the purpose completely and/or you have to wait way too long
    • yayintertubes, on 06/09/2008, -1/+4You need to learn some programming before you form an opinion on this, let me explain...

      1. A server-side script generates the image (already knowing what it says) and skews/disguises it.
      2. The user (now client side) reads the text and slaps it in an input box..
      3. The server-side script compares the original text with the user-inputted text..
      (a) they don't match, it's a bot
      or (b) they match, the script goes ahead and redirects/performs an action.

      It's fully automated.
    • telekid, on 06/09/2008, -0/+4That's the dumbest post I've ever read, how can a person claim that a technology currently employed by millions of websites around the globe doesn't work?
    • Ge64, on 06/19/2008, -0/+0no, i was referring to the idea of using pieces of books that the OCR can't read as captcha codes. RTFA.
  • Mononuclear, on 06/09/2008, -0/+32 to 3 years? I don't think there are many captchas out there that haven't been broken already. Also the OCR project, where it displays two words one being the unknown one, has been around for a long time.

    I had to double check the date on the Time.com article because no information in the article is more recent than a year and everything has been reported on many times.
  • Kristijan12, on 06/09/2008, -2/+5Nothing will beat rapidshares little cats.
    I don`t think they will make a software that could recognize and distinguish cats from dogs, they are to abstract forms for software to analyze.
    • dazparkour, on 06/09/2008, -0/+1They already have made software that can recognize some of the animals in it as well as some of the trees, that a vehicle is a car or a lorry in the background, that there is a door and it is blue.

      It's quite neat stuff. I think (Dont Quote Me) It got 66% of things right, the person got 40something%.
  • invinciblechunk, on 06/09/2008, -0/+6An article about CATPCHA that neglects to mention how Russian bots can now break most of the major ones with a ~15% success rate? Welcome to 8 ***** years ago, Time.
  • tobidotman, on 06/09/2008, -0/+0Yeah...animals....check rapidshare.com, they have animals in their capatcha
    It's crazy out here...
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