An executive at Microsoft Corp. has an unusual idea for beating spammers. Powerful software tools and supercomputers aren't involved, but kittens are.
Or rather, photos of kittens. Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, has found that asking a user to identify the subject of a photo, like a kitten, could help block spam programs.
Currently, services like Microsoft's free e-mail service Hotmail require new users to type in a string of distorted letters as proof that it's a human signing up for the account and not a computer. Called Human Interactive Proofs (HIPs), Microsoft, Ticketmaster and a host of other companies have been using the system for around five years, Larson said. He spoke in Seattle on Friday at TypeCon 2007, an annual conference put on by the Society of Typographic Aficionados for type enthusiasts and designers.
When Hotmail first started using HIPs, the number of e-mail accounts generated on the first day dropped by 20 percent without an increase in support queries, Larson said. That was a sign that the HIPs were fooling the computer programs that spammers use to automate signing up for new Hotmail accounts from which spam is sent. However, spammers learned how to tweak their programs to better recognize the HIPs, he said.
Or rather, photos of kittens. Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, has found that asking a user to identify the subject of a photo, like a kitten, could help block spam programs.
Currently, services like Microsoft's free e-mail service Hotmail require new users to type in a string of distorted letters as proof that it's a human signing up for the account and not a computer. Called Human Interactive Proofs (HIPs), Microsoft, Ticketmaster and a host of other companies have been using the system for around five years, Larson said. He spoke in Seattle on Friday at TypeCon 2007, an annual conference put on by the Society of Typographic Aficionados for type enthusiasts and designers.
When Hotmail first started using HIPs, the number of e-mail accounts generated on the first day dropped by 20 percent without an increase in support queries, Larson said. That was a sign that the HIPs were fooling the computer programs that spammers use to automate signing up for new Hotmail accounts from which spam is sent. However, spammers learned how to tweak their programs to better recognize the HIPs, he said.
Now, it's a race for Microsoft to continue to alter its HIP system to fool the computers, which ultimately seem to catch on. Larson's group at Microsoft experiments with different ways to distort the text used in HIPs in a way that is easy for humans to read but difficult for computers.
One twist on the HIP idea that they've worked on is to display 16 or more photos and ask for identification of the photos. In an example, he suggested using pictures of cats and dogs. The problem with the concept, however, is that Microsoft would have to create a massive catalog of photos, otherwise the programmers could match the correct response with each photo in the catalog and begin to spoof the system, he said.
Audience members had a variety of ideas for ways to expand on the idea in order to try to beat the spam programs. One suggested that Microsoft continually take videos of a kitten jumping around a room, as a way to generate a nearly endless string of photos for identification.
"It's possible that kittens are the wave of the future," Larson joked.
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News source: Yahoo!
http://www.thepcspy.com/kittenauth
They should display an array of black and white illustrations of faces and ask which ones are expressing some arbitrary emotion.
You can test it out in action here: http://www.thepcspy.com/contact
Pretty nifty
nevermind, I don't want to tell you my idea I'm working on, because then someone will steal it and make a lot of money, and I still won't even if I finish my idea...
But what if the user enters a description that makes sense to a human but the system doesn't account for -"baby cat"?
Look: http://www.cloud9nine.net/photoverify/
Glassed Silver:mac
My idea: take the picture idea and use it, but instead of having a user type in words, why not have a user find the one that is the same, where the others are exactly the same, but with minor differences, perhaps in color variance or random (noticeable) blocks of pixels or something.
up with kittens
up with kittens
+1 Qft
Do anything to get rid of the Spam, I'm sick of opening my email only to find hundreds of Retarded Spam emails by Retarded Spammers, when I'm waiting for emails from real people, friends about important things and have to sift through all the crap emails.
Furthermore, there are likely legitimate uses for script-based access to some resources. For example, a one-click script which opens an account with several services-- if you have to set up, for example, the accounts a new customer will need every time.
Surely there are better ways to do things.
It seems like they've decided to lock things down at the registration level, but I could see a much more activity-based filtering.
-If 90% of your email has an image attachment, something's wrong, you're probably a spammer.
-If the copy of your mail either consistently flunks a grammar test or can be easily found through Google, you're probably a spammer.
Added plus: Those would snag once-legitimate users who had compromised accounts.
1st already existing email accounts
2nd not every mail provider will use this
3rd there are some mail providers known for welcoming spammers
4th human registers, bot sends... how bout that?
Glassed Silver:mac
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