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Worst CAPTCHA Ever

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41–50 of 169 posts

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#42
post #22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea. If i was ever to create a product for colorblinds only i'd use that.

It's not an uncommon strategy (eg: fill up a comment form with hidden but obviously named form fields) and since people won't be filling in those hidden fields then bots will have revealed themselves. This isn't by any means a complete solution however it does catch 90% of drive-by spam.

Yup, this is also known as the Honeypot Captcha technique: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/09/11/honeypot-captcha.aspx

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#44
post #2

Well, it is a good way to tell computers and humans apart. Computers can read it, while humans can't. They should reject corectly filled in captchas.

I still loathe reCAPTCHA more than any other captcha out there. I've given up hopes of logging in on many occasions simply because of it.

Looks like it's designed for not to be deciphered either by humans or computers.

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#45
D&B executive's spouse: You've really got to help my little brother. He hasn't had a job since he got fired from McDonald's two years ago.

Executive: What can he do?

Spouse: He's really good at programming. He took a class in it in high school five years ago, and I'm pretty sure he didn't fail. He even has his own web page.

Executive: Hmmmmm. I think we have something he can work on....

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#47
post #2

Well, it is a good way to tell computers and humans apart. Computers can read it, while humans can't. They should reject corectly filled in captchas.

You'd think, but what's so dumb about this captcha is that it's both easy to guess for a computer, but for a human too. If you look at it, the random parts are outside the readable text (which is just white on a gray background). I'd love to know what led to the "decision" of implementing something so dumb.

You're missing the point bud, it's not that it's easy to guess, it's that the answer is in the bloody HTML as plaintext.

No guessing required.

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#48
post #8

A wonderful example of cargo cult programming.

It's like all these sites that requires you to enter your current password before you can change it, but deleting the entire account is just ticking a check box (at least twitter and dribbble worked this way back when I had accounts there).

Some things we been doing for so long that we forget why we do them at all.

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#49
post #40
post #38

Every expense was spared to give the impression that no expense had been spared. It's a credit report site; they want you to think they are secure.

Exactly. It probably increases conversion because it looks secure. Credit card forms are sometimes used that way too, they get a lot of extra information because if they don't, people feel that they're scammy.

But surely a working captcha would increase conversion as well and have the added benefit of being a captcha?

Re: Worst CAPTCHA Ever

#50
One of my buddies worked in the accounting department at our state government. He needed to get a bunch of documents from another agency (like hundreds every month) to process claims. Well this other agency requires everyone to go through their website and download each document one at a time. They said it was to prevent abuse. For some reason they couldn't just send a batch of them to us, even a fellow state agency. So I made a scraper to download an entire month at a time. I figure it was a webforms site because it was filled with postbacks and viewstates which made it a bit of a pain, but the ridiculous thing was the CAPTCHA code:

and TFU3P was the CAPTCHA code!

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