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CAPTCHA Arbitrage

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21–25 of 25 posts

Re: CAPTCHA Arbitrage

#22
post #2

"In an attempt to learn where the solvers live, Savage et al. sent out specially fabricated CAPTCHAs with images of words in various languages. [..] But one organization showed exceptional linguistic versatility, even solving challenges in Klingon." This is a rather surprising finding.

[deleted]

Re: CAPTCHA Arbitrage

#23
post #2

"In an attempt to learn where the solvers live, Savage et al. sent out specially fabricated CAPTCHAs with images of words in various languages. [..] But one organization showed exceptional linguistic versatility, even solving challenges in Klingon." This is a rather surprising finding.

[deleted]

Re: CAPTCHA Arbitrage

#24
post #2

"In an attempt to learn where the solvers live, Savage et al. sent out specially fabricated CAPTCHAs with images of words in various languages. [..] But one organization showed exceptional linguistic versatility, even solving challenges in Klingon." This is a rather surprising finding.

I combed through the paper and found this paragraph for you guys, the organization only answered two Klingon ones correctly:

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Finally, the results for ImageToText are impressive. Relative to the other services, ImageToText has appre- ciable accuracy across a remarkable range of languages, including languages where none of the other services had few if any correct solutions (Dutch, Korean, Viet- namese, Greek, Arabic) and even two correct solutions of CAPTCHAs in Klingon. Either ImageToText recruits a truly international workforce, or the workers were able to identify the CAPTCHA construction and learn the correct answers. ImageToText is the most expensive service by a wide margin, but clearly has a dynamic and adaptive labor pool.

Re: CAPTCHA Arbitrage

#25
post #6

I went to a speech by savage earlier this fall. The point that I took away from it is that what captchas do is filter out the bad guys who haven't figured out a business model. On the klingon point: They theorized that the particular organization was a bunch of PHDs rather than farmed labor - and that it had learned from previous 'example answers' they had submitted. That particular organization, it was noted, was al…

I don't understand what difference it makes being in Klingon? usually Captchas are just jibberish anyway. Recognizing individual letters remains the challenge.

They used the Klingon alphabet, which is nothing like the latin alphabet
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