This is not a new idea. http://adcaptcher.com/ is at least one year old and it's already being used on a couple of sites.
Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
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Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#72Damn, that is both smart and evil (because the user can't ignore these kind of ads). What can we do to make sure this product doesn't catch on?
If you don't want them to catch on, refuse to sign up to any service that uses them. Simple.
Thats the usual suggestion - but not using it isn't enough to kill IE6.
So what can we do that will actually work?
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#73I spent a minute trying but no, I cannot think of anything that would make me go 'well fuck you' and go elsewhere faster then being expected to type out ad copy like a school child.
and yet you will gladly type randomized and difficult to read letters or words? This is actually attempting to solve two problems at once, and in some ways it could be more interesting to the user if the ads are well targetted. Why not help the site owner make a bit of $$??? are you really afraid that typing in a bit of ad copy is going to turn you into a mindless drone
If the site owner is going to make money of that, then the only reason it is economically feasible to do so is if the brand owner gets at least that from the value of showing me their ad.
The only way to do that is if it works.
So yeah, I am concerned.
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
sigh .. etc . There would be more than 8 options, many more. YES, it would be a pain to update the library, which is why I'm commending this particular concept for solving that problem ...
You aren't getting it. The probability is 1/ present to the user >. If you show the user 100 images and ask them to select one, a bot will have a 1% probability to find the right one, but the user will tell you to get lost. If you present 10 images (still a stretch), bots will have 10% success rate just answering randomly. EDIT: Wait, from what I see you mean that the user will have to write "cat" or "dog" or whateve…
not to mention the fact that the bot will get spotted for entering the same phrase more then a few times, get put on a list and get served the squiggly crap
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#75So you replace the hard to read CAPTCHAs with easy to read ads. Of which presumably there will be a limited number in circulation at any one time. Sounds kinda easy to circumvent...
You know, most modern capchas are not solved by bots, but by people in third world countries solving them for pennies. The current going rate is about $1/1000 and there are easy to use captcha solving APIs for any platform. capcha has long provided an illusion of security, nothing more. Any and all captchas will be broken.
yeh but you gota look at it from a business standpoint
who profits from the outsourcing? why would a website owner pay to outsource the ads to get solved in india just to get blacklisted then lose revenue that would have come in anyway for less
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
and yet you will gladly type randomized and difficult to read letters or words? This is actually attempting to solve two problems at once, and in some ways it could be more interesting to the user if the ads are well targetted. Why not help the site owner make a bit of $$??? are you really afraid that typing in a bit of ad copy is going to turn you into a mindless drone
I'd rather type random characters than "Safer Browsing" for an IE ad. You have to consider the emotional reaction to these ads.
What about the refresh button?
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You aren't getting it. The probability is 1/ present to the user >. If you show the user 100 images and ask them to select one, a bot will have a 1% probability to find the right one, but the user will tell you to get lost. If you present 10 images (still a stretch), bots will have 10% success rate just answering randomly. EDIT: Wait, from what I see you mean that the user will have to write "cat" or "dog" or whateve…
not to mention the fact that the bot will get spotted for entering the same phrase more then a few times, get put on a list and get served the squiggly crap
You have no idea how spam works. A bot isn't just one user trying to enter "cat" repeatedly. Botnets send requests from thousands of different IPs. You wouldn't know which ones are real users, and which ones are bots.
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#78This sounds a lot like what Vidoop tried to do. Their initial idea was to replace passwords with an authentication mechanism based on selecting a number of pictures that fit into user-chosen categories. A person would select 3-5 images from a grid of 12 with each image belonging to a distinct category. Those who picked the images, in the correct order, corresponding to their chosen categories (selected on sign up to…
Vidoop was bought up by Confident Technologies, which is still doing the image-based captcha as well as image-based authentication for Web and mobile: www.ConfidentTechnologies.com. The free MyVidoop service is still around too.
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#79Tried signing up for an account. They eat their own dogfood, for which I'm thankful. It looks like the advertisers can force you to click through to get the security code. (e.g. Catfish's "Click through to see the security code!") I'll pass.
Funny, I first noticed how they don't eat their own dogfood. They don't have a captcha on their contact form: http://www.solvemedia.com/contact.html. Seems to me like that would be a good place to have one.
Re: Goodbye (Crummy) CAPTCHAs. Hello Ad Dollars?
#80Guys, isn't ycombinator all about helping us become good entrepreneurs? Why tear down a good effort? How is this productive? These guys have serious supporters and cliemts so they have to be on to something