Who Needs CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA, the short form of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is essentially a sort of test that recognizes whether the user is a computer or a human being. It comes under the trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. For more information, you can go to http://www.protectwebform.com/.

A CAPTCHA requests the user to take a test. Any user who provides the correct answer is considered to be a human. A very common instance of a CAPTCHA is to ask the user to key in letters from a distorted image. The sequence includes alphabets and numbers. If the user keys in the correct sequence, he is considered to be a human or else a machine. A smart CAPTCHA is pretty easy to implement. You can get the details from http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.

If you've put your email address anywhere on your website, there's no doubt you've gotten a lot of spam because of it. Unfortunately what you do to let those who visit your website contact you, is what bots (animated programs searching the web for user id's and emails) are looking for. They grab a hold of that email address and add it to their lists that are about to be used, without your permission, for spamming.

Another option is CAPTCHA that does not allow the spammers to get access to your email ids. Many websites and sign-up pages use CAPTHCA. It assumes that computer programs cannot read distorted characters. It is considered fairly reliable.

As a fully automated program, CAPTCHA is so advanced it creates tests that can only be completed properly by humans. And since it runs itself, you don't have to baby-sit the system for it to work. This is why so many webmasters use CAPTCHA to keep their sites safe and secure.

Spammers are a nuisance. Once they get hold of your email id, you are bombarded with spam mails and you can never be sure what your id will be used for. This is where CAPTCHA comes to your rescue by preventing abuse of your system.

In other words, CAPTCHA not only prevents encroachment by spammers for commercial purpose, it also protects the systems that are gullible to spam like, the webmail services of Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. They also help prevent automated postings on online blogs. CAPTCHA helps in enforcing a usage policy and prevents any kind of deviation from the policy. This is required in case a service allows automated use but within a limit.

There are others out there that claim to do what CAPTCHA can do. They have created similar programs that ask varying questions to allow someone to get into a site or sign up for a blog. None of them are as reliable as CAPTCHA because with a database, any of the other programs questions could be answered, while the CAPTCHA image recognition system is foolproof.

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Oleg is an expert on CAPTCHA design. Click to learn more about his new Smart CAPTCHA technology.

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