CAPTCHAs

CAPCHAs are those odd little boxes that show some badly malformed letters and numbers and ask you to type them in. The idea is to check whether you are a human.

The problem is that CAPCHAs are pretty difficult for humans. And they're fairly easy for computers. There are the simple work-arounds (like paying to break CAPCHAs on Mechanical Turk). And there are the high-tech solutions where you simply build a computer that can solve them. My biggest concern though is the new kind of CAPTCHA that people have begun using. I find it to be a real problem, and it, too, can be worked around by anyone who is sufficiently motivated, but it is becoming a disturbingly common new way of identifying real humans:

Posted Mon 28 October 2013 by mcherm in Security, Technology