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Re: Captia/security boxes

for

From: Stephan Wehner
Date: Mar 23, 2009 11:40AM

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Randi < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm sure you're familiar with those stupid captia boxes, where you

CAPTCHA is an acronym for

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

> must type the letters you see to prove you'r not a spammer. Most have
> a "listen to this" option but I haven't even figured those out. I
> tried to sign up for a twitter and could not get past their listen
> option. It says to type the 2 words, but it gives me an entire phrase
> when I listen. Does anyone know a work around?
>
> Also, I've heard of some sites simply asking a question like, what
> color is grass? If I were to write to sites that have these
> inaccessible or confusing captias, might I suggest an alternative? Are
> the open to that sort of thing? I had a sighted friend help set up
> Facebook, and they have an option to reply to a text message to
> eliminate further captias. This is great, but I needed a sighted
> person to help set it up.

I think most sites would be open to a suggestion. But it is not known
how to solve the problem.

The problem is that spammers target websites that perform automated
comment-posts or automated sign-ups.
Their programs post all kinds of nonsense comments or articles, often
with links to irrelevant sites that they operate.
(I'm sorry I couldn't find an example victim site for you)

Websites of course want ordinary people to contribute or sign-up, but
how does one recognize and block spammers?
The ordinary CAPTCHA's you mention kind of work for sighted people,
but not that well either.

How to allow the blind to participate while preventing spammers? If
you have an idea, feel free to let me know (or this list)

Stephan


> I'd like to get a twitter to see what all the fuss is about, but I'm stuck.
>
> Thanks,
> Randi
>
> --
> I'm not disabled, my eyes are. ;)
>