Do Good CAPTCHAs Really Have To Be Unfriendly?
by John Prodonovich For those of you who are not familiar with the term, a CAPTCHA is a feature on many user populated websites, such as Myspace with the purpose of blocking automated programs from spamming its users and for overall security. Here is how it works: A user is required to enter a random letter and number password into a form before being able to submit information, log in, etc. This password is essentially given directly to the user in an image, rather than in text form, so that an automated program cannot detect the characters. The password the form field expects is the same as that shown on the image, but this sometimes causes problems. Jeff Atwood at the Coding Horrors blog discusses whether CAPTCHAs are dead. This follows a news report that scalpers probably beat the CAPTCHAs at Ticketmaster. Jeff links to a Chinese site that sells CAPTCHA decoders. The site quotes different prices for breaking different CAPTCHAs. An eBay decoder, for example, is being sold for $4000
