The next Amazon?
June 7, 2016
The Dark Web
June 21, 2016
Chances are you have bought something online or posted on a message board at some point in your life. Chances are you have had that little box come up where you have to type what you see on the screen in. And chances are you have grumbled about it. It’s not easy to read, there’s a line through it, is that letter upper case or lower case, is that a 1 or an L? While this process can be frustrating, it is a necessary part of modern commerce.
It is called CAPTCHA. That stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University and for the most part the name is straight forward except for the Turing part. Turing is Alan Turing, who developed a test to see if a computer can converse like a human being. CAPTCHA exists for one reason, to make sure that it is a human on the other side that is entering the information in and not a computer bot. They are made intentionally tough to read, since only we humans have the ability to see and decipher letters that have been stretched and manipulated.
So why not use a picture? Think of a simple picture of a country road winding by a farmer’s field. There are so many words that can describe that image that there is no one right answer and what could be described as one thing in Pennsylvania may be called another in Texas and another in Oregon. Some have also suggested simply a box to check, but that can be automated.
So there you have it, while frustratingly difficult sometimes, it is there for your protection and it is not going away anytime soon. If you can’t read it there is an option to select a new one.
