Monday, August 5, 2013

CAPTCHA getting stretched

Evidently I'm not the only person who has found it more and more difficult to suss out what letters the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) wants me to type.

Bid to kill CAPTCHA security test gains momentum (Canberra Times)
The official web standards body, the World Wide Web Consortium, said there are many CAPTCHA alternatives, including simple maths questions, trivia, the use of sound files and even biometric technology such as fingerprints and retinal scanning. Microsoft have launched a substitute called Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access), that asks users to identify photos of cats and dogs instead of letters.