Disabled Australian starts petition to kill CAPTCHA


Recommended Posts

CAPTCHA tests have been annoying many internet users for some time now, but one disabled Australian has finally had enough, starting a petition to encourage major companies to get rid of the tests. Wayne Hawkins is a blind resident of Sydney who is sick of having CAPTCHA tests prevent him from easily accessing the web, and is calling for it to be killed "once and for all".

Hawkins highlights how CAPTCHA tests are not only inaccessible for disabled citizens, but also frustrating for all internet users. They can't be read by screen-reading software by design, which prevents blind people from using their usual tools to fill out CAPTCHA-protected forms, the audio versions are often completely incomprehensible, and the words displayed are often ridiculous or illegible for sighted people.

 

more:

http://www.techspot.com/news/53495-disabled-australian-starts-petition-to-kill-captcha.html

 

 

petition:

http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/it-s-time-to-finally-kill-captcha-2#

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the ones that ask a question or make you do a simple math problem. There are other ways to differentiate a human from a bot, things far more clever than what we have now. Last line in the article says:

 

Hawkins says that CAPTCHA tests "fundamentally fail to properly recognise people with disabilities as human".

Bit extreme wording, maybe, but the test is purportedly designed to only be passed by a human, so... heh.

 

That being said, I doubt anything will change.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books. 

 

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books. 

 

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

haha I did not know that, that's pretty funny :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books. 

 

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

I do this too.  Saw it on 4chan years ago.  Any words with punctuation or capitalization = Ebook digitilizing. 

Found the picture.. won't post as it uses the word, beginning with N, that rappers like to say, but if I say I would get in trouble.

http://lolpics.se/5397-recaptcha

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do this too.  Saw it on 4chan years ago.  Any words with punctuation or capitalization = Ebook digitilizing. 

Found the picture.. won't post as it uses the word, beginning with N, that rappers like to say, but if I say I would get in trouble.

http://lolpics.se/5397-recaptcha

 

Yea been doing it since I saw in on 4Chan years ago  :woot:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I despise captchas too. As a web designer I've purposefully never implemented it on any site I've had a hand in.

 

There are better ways.

Such as? Alternate captcha systems aren't anywhere near as secure as their authors like to claim. In most cases, hackers can easily bypass the homebrew captcha many web developers like to invent. Google's reCAPTCHA requires very sophisticated algorithms to recognize the characters in the image. It's the best solution Google has to prevent fraudulent activity. It's a huge improvement over the days where several invalid logins would lock the account making it impossible to login, including for the owner of the account.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All captchas I've seen recently have an audio option, that's all the disabled need to get past it, sounds more like pure laziness

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All captchas I've seen recently have an audio option, that's all the disabled need to get past it, sounds more like pure laziness

 

Speaking of lazy try reading the article.

 

 "the audio versions are often completely incomprehensible"

 

Though I'll admit it is mighty generous of you to tell all disabled people what they need in these situations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

if deaf/blind people cannot hear or see on that captcha program over the internet. it is very hard for them to read it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

if deaf/blind people cannot hear or see on that captcha program over the internet. it is very hard for them to read it.

 

Even people with perfect sight and hearing have trouble understanding some of these stupid things, imagine what it's like for a disabled person. As was pointed out there are far better ways of doing these things. The squiggly distorted words on crazy backgrounds and mumbled gibberish audio captchas need to be abolished. I'm amazed that some people are actually defending them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking of lazy try reading the article.

 

 "the audio versions are often completely incomprehensible"

 

 

LoL

 

-------

 

A self-aware captcha I came across a while ago:

 

sf9PWlb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Such as? Alternate captcha systems aren't anywhere near as secure as their authors like to claim. In most cases, hackers can easily bypass the homebrew captcha many web developers like to invent. Google's reCAPTCHA requires very sophisticated algorithms to recognize the characters in the image. It's the best solution Google has to prevent fraudulent activity. It's a huge improvement over the days where several invalid logins would lock the account making it impossible to login, including for the owner of the account.

When a captcha is used it's to try to stop bots filling forms but it usually succeeds in stopping human users filling forms too. They're not easy to use and provide a road block to a lot of people. Bad Design and Dev 101 there. As mentioned some people find them basically impossible to get past easily.

 

This is why they should be removed from usage.

 

You can use a variety of techniques that are a lot more transparent or totally invisible to the user to try to detect bots. The common honeypot field or even measuring the time taken to complete a given form. Often a human isn't going to fill out a form in a second (auto-filling aside) but a bot can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

other 'good captcha' that i know, is not about typing annoying words,

but present a simple flash game that can be solved under less than 10 seconds using commonly known basic knowledge.

Thats however are doesn't fit with the disabled ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When a captcha is used it's to try to stop bots filling forms but it usually succeeds in stopping human users filling forms too. They're not easy to use and provide a road block to a lot of people. Bad Design and Dev 101 there. As mentioned some people find them basically impossible to get past easily.

 

This is why they should be removed from usage.

 

You can use a variety of techniques that are a lot more transparent or totally invisible to the user to try to detect bots. The common honeypot field or even measuring the time taken to complete a given form. Often a human isn't going to fill out a form in a second (auto-filling aside) but a bot can.

If Google were to simply drop reCAPTCHA, the number of fake and compromised accounts would skyrocket. Of course it's not perfect, but what is? That's no reason to abandon the system altogether.

 

Simple protections like you suggested will stop simple bots crawling the web, but it will do nothing to stop any individual or group who directly targets your website (which happens even to small websites). Heck, even images with distorted characters aren't too difficult to bypass using a variety of techniques to "undistort" the image and ever improving OCR software.

 

However, I have to admit, the audio captchas are really bad. I just tried a few and I didn't get a single one correct.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have used one on my sites which were sliders - similar to slide to unlock.

 

http://demos.myjqueryplugins.com/qaptcha/

 

I didn't use that one, but another one for the Joomla sites I used to make.  It dramatically dropped the spambots to zero and humans to 100% which used it.  Even got comments of how easy it was to use.    I think we need things like this to be effective, or alternative methods of authentication that you aren't a spammer. 

 

With that said - for every lock there is a key and for every lock there is a lock pick that can defeat it easily.  So, it will always be a cat/mouse game against technology which can manipulate the sliders (I remember hearing that was possible already - not sure), but it would be a start to find a different method of spam bot prevention. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Google were to simply drop reCAPTCHA, the number of fake and compromised accounts would skyrocket. Of course it's not perfect, but what is? That's no reason to abandon the system altogether.

 

Simple protections like you suggested will stop simple bots crawling the web, but it will do nothing to stop any individual or group who directly targets your website (which happens even to small websites). Heck, even images with distorted characters aren't too difficult to bypass using a variety of techniques to "undistort" the image and ever improving OCR software.

 

However, I have to admit, the audio captchas are really bad. I just tried a few and I didn't get a single one correct.

Which is why there are methods like PIN codes or verification by email. If an account isn't verified in a given time period just purge it.

 

Of course no system is perfect. My point is captcha systems are generally crap from a user perspective and efforts should be taken to eliminate their usage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

other 'good captcha' that i know, is not about typing annoying words,

but present a simple flash game that can be solved under less than 10 seconds using commonly known basic knowledge.

Thats however are doesn't fit with the disabled ...

Of course anything flash is completely inaccessible a lot of disabled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.