HN Explorer

an idea for a start-up

1 points by blored ↗ HN
I hate Captchas that make no sense and I routinely feel a reprieve when a catpcha has common lettters in sequence. For example, "dogbat" is easier than "hgzxmp". So how about a captcha that makes use of this. Maybe call it EZCaptcha or something.

3 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 19.0 ms ] thread
jamiequint
sounds like a feature not a business
ivankirigin
Well, then you give spammers some apriori information, right? Spammers that know your system is used could tailor a solution that has a higher chance of defeating the captcha. This limits the reach of your service.

Captchas are entering the realm of machine solvable. Soon enough, humans will find them so annoyingly hard to discern, many won't bother. And artificial artificial intelligence (e.g. humans solving captchas for porn) make them only a low fence.

All around, it's a dead end.

Recognizing humans isn't necessarily a dead end. Using a system of warped characters is.

nreece
Have a look at reCAPTCHA: http://www.captcha.net/

The words shown come directly from old books that are being digitized. So you can stop spam and help digitize books at the same time.