Product Lines
Ruminations on the System i Market
June 2, 2008
Captcha Cracking?
Doubtless, you've encountered crazy, warped "captcha" letters such as these on various websites. Perhaps, like System iNetwork, you even use the bot-deterring, spam-foiling tool to prevent "pollution" in your company's forums, blogs, and other places users can enter content.
Well, chalk one up for the bots and spammers, who have apparently begun cracking captchas on some well-known websites, according to a podcast in American Public Media's May 30 Future Tense column. I don't know about you, but despite the fact that captchas annoy me, I appreciate their intent. I know that they've helped prevent a lot of spam -- though not all -- in the System iNetwork forums, blogs, and reader-comment areas.
What's next if captcha is no longer effective? The podcast mentions image captchas. Have you encountered those? I have, on my local newspaper's website of all places. If those get cracked, too, what does that mean not only for "web 2.0," but "web 3.0"? Will the spammers win?
--Linda Harty, security & networking/connectivity editor
Posted by lharty at June 2, 2008 9:36 AM
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