Is Captcha Useful?

Is Captcha Useful?

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CAPTCHA or the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is widely advertised but one wonders if it is really useful or not. But, before we discuss its practical utility, let us see what CAPTCHA is all about. It is a test, which helps the computer to distinguish between machines and human beings. It creates and grades tests that automatically accept all humans and reject all machines.

The idea is that while as humans we can make out a series of distorted letters and numbers, a machine will not be able to make sense of such images. To learn more about how the program works you can visit http://www.protectwebform.com/. There is also a site for our more advanced version of the program at http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.

Having a CAPTCHA installed can protect against bots, which are programs that can repeatedly spam inboxes, try to post and retrieve personal information in chatrooms, and also try to get e-mail addresses and other information to use for promotions to sell services or items, or sign you up for numerous free mail services.

The bots crack your passwords, encroach upon your privacy and use your personal information for commercial use without your permission. They create worms that can cause immense harm to your machine.

CAPTCHA is a sure shot way of preventing these bots from creating havoc. The CAPTCHA asks the user to recognize the distorted image of letters and numbers usually with a string over a noisy' background. While it is easy for a human to decipher it, the machine usually cannot. And, that is how CAPTCHA distinguishes between a human user and a computer. Various large and small sites find CAPTCHA quite useful. No wonder, you see them in mail services, banking sites, blogs, chat rooms and similar places.

Spammers send unsolicited, undesirable and unwarranted messages in bulk to your inbox. Besides that, there can be other spam too in the form of usenet newsgroup spam, log spam, search engine spam and the like.

Some advertisers think spam is a good way to go to get their message out to the masses. It doesn't really cost them anything other than finding lists of e-mail addresses to send to, so they send mass amounts of mailings, and there is nothing you can do about to stop it, because laws do not allow holding a sender responsible for the number of mailings they send on the internet.

Usenet spam is a message that can be sent to twenty or more Usenet newsgroups. This kind of spam floods the newsgroups with unnecessary advertisement and posts. It also challenges your ability to accept and manage the topics on the system.

There is another kind of email spam that targets individuals with direct messages. It scans postings from Usenet or pilfers from the Internet mailing list. This kind of spamming involves some expenditure.


About the Author:
Oleg is an expert on CAPTCHA design and development. Click to find out more about his revolutionary new CAPTCHA Plugin technology.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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