engine - 9:26 am on May 22, 2012 (gmt 0)

Replacing CAPTCHAs with a mini game sounds a great idea, especially as so many CAPTCHAs are becoming unreadable.

CAPTCHA Replacement Is A Mini Game [venturebeat.com]

Websites need to verify that a visitor is a real person and not an automated bot. But the CAPTCHA test that they came up with — where you have to type in the word that you see in a blurry distorted font image — is extremely annoying and often leads to multiple failures. So a Detroit-based startup, Are You a Human, is replacing the CAPTCHA with simple minigames instead. It is releasing its human authentication tool, PlayThru, to help companies fight spammers and bots that have begun to circumvent CAPTCHAs. Companies using it include Quicken Loans and Fat Head, and users have played nearly 2 million games to date.