recaptcha issue

another reason I'm not a fan

[LifeinAsia]

A recent encounter with a recaptcha verification required me to select all the pictures with street names. OK, so I selected the 2 pictures with street signs.

Nope, it said I hadn't picked all of them. The only other pictures with any type of wording on them were some sort of food label on a jar and a "Beware of Dog" sign.

Still trying to find Beware of Dog Street on Google Maps...

[Andy Langton]

The "choose the right picture" thing seems to be coming up all the time for me, recently. I practically have an unpaid part-time job classifying images for Google. It's funny how, to prove I'm not a robot, I have to complete a task that would be better suited to robots ;)

[mack]

I had one a few days ago. "select all pictures that contain a body of water". One was a lake, one was a stream and one was a watermelon. Machines crack me up sometimes :)

Mack.

[lucy24]

one was a stream

And then you'll get visitors arguing over whether a stream (in the generic sense) counts as a "body of water", or does the term only mean standing water, and then oceanographers will jump into the fray to argue about the "standing" question, and...

[LifeinAsia]

Good thing there wasn't a picture of ice cubes.

[toidi]

This is why i refuse to put captcha on any of my sites. Every now and then i have to deal with a spam bot hitting my contact forms but i would rather deal with that than lose someone real at the door.

[engine]

Interesting you talk about those images. That's the one where the images are sometimes confusing and i've failed to get past. I'm a robot!

[topr8]

This is why i refuse to put captcha on any of my sites.

i'm very much inclined to agree with toidi, i have various bot blocking measures on the site itself and then on processing the form i check for a few 'tells' of my experience of spam bots.
occasionally one gets through.

but i feel it is better for my users/customers not to have to bother dealing with silly pictures or tests of any type.

[Andy Langton]

The way I see it is if you're giving someone something (e.g. here's your free download) captcha is acceptable. If you want something from your visitor (e.g enquiry, sale) then captcha is not OK. Otherwise, you're making your site's problem with bots your human visitor's problem, which makes no sense to me.

[creeking]

engine........"I'm a robot!"

:o

I KNEW it! that explains a lot.

[blend27]

engine........"I'm a robot!"

:o

I KNEW it! that explains a lot.

Wait until we get a confirmation that the SYSTEM is a robot too.

[Hoople]

Pictures used in recaptchas can be hell on those with vision challenges. My niche has a LOT of Baby Boomers (and older), many using glasses and other vision augmentation (browser setting changes).

My contact forms got abused too. I did a combination of a better form and a math question security add on. Seems to work best and allows the question text to scale with the browser setting some use to clearly see the pages.

[lucy24]

select all pictures that contain a body of water

I just met an even better one. The instruction was to select all pictures that have a boat in them-- and then, so help me, two of the pictures showed vast bodies of water. No telescope provided.

[topr8]

ah great Andy_Langton summed it up perfectly, i wasn't thinking beyond myself, as we don't 'give away' anything (except the ability to read articles),

The way I see it is if you're giving someone something (e.g. here's your free download) captcha is acceptable.

we just want people to email us and i'm not going to put up obsticles for that.

If you want something from your visitor (e.g enquiry, sale) then captcha is not OK.

slightly OT is the increased use of trutwit (can't remember the exact name off hand) by twitter users, where you have to validate yourself to even follow someone - how arrogant are they, to think i want to follow them that much - usually i just unfollow them on principle

[engine]

hehehe, thanks creeking and blend27 You will be assimilated, resistance is futile!

There's a difference between a barrier and a data capture (not CAPTCHA). If a system is being abused then a CAPTCHA is a good way to slow down the abusers, however, if you want to actually capture a user's details for re-marketing, or support, you do need to have a system that's friendly to humans. I have struggled with many of these images in the captchas, however, if I really want the service, i'll persevere until I get through: Usually the second time it works.