The Dreaded Captcha

Hey again, SighFye here.

Being a web developer I am constantly looking for ways to stop bots from registering to my sites or filling out forms. However, just because I am a web developer it does not mean I like captchas. No no, the truth is, I despise them. Most of them are ridiculously hard, and even when you DO write in what it says, it denies you access thinking you are a bot.

I mean seriously what do some of these even say. It may as well be something like this.

At least this one is readable.

A few years back Bel and I built a website for a gaming community we ran called Forsaken Crusade. I really did not want the members to be subject to such an abomination of the internet, so I did my research to find something a little more user friendly.

The first thing I came across was what is known as honey pots. Basically this is placing a hidden field in the form that a user can not see. A bot however will see the field, and fill it in. Then all you need to do is check whether the field was entered.

I liked this approach a lot as the members were not bothered in any manner. They were totally unaware that I had even checked for bots. But it didn't take long to figure out this was not fool proof. I was still getting new members who turned out to be bot or contact forms being filled out with ad information. So the research began again.

That's when I stumbled upon Are You A Human captcha. These captchas took the stupidity out of captchas and made them more fun. Instead of trying to read some text all you needed to do was play a small game.

This was the answer to captchas I had always wanted. Its not hard for the normal person and it a small way it was enjoyable. So I started using them.

Recently I have been working on a new project which need captchas, so without delay I went straight to areyouahuman.com. This time though something had changed. Yes, they are still games and yes they are still easy, but now, you are presented with an advert within the game.

Try it out here

Try it here

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think people should provide things for free if they don't want to, and I do think this is a very clever way to have an ad and make a little cash from it. However, this is just no longer a solution I want to use. It just no longer feels right. If you do like this idea then click here to start using them.

So I did a little more research and found a new captcha from the iron giants, Google. In my opinion this is the best captcha I have ever seen. There is no game, there are no unreadable words to rewrite. All you need to do is click a checkbox and you are done.

From my understanding the check-box is made using JavaScript and undetectable by bots. I am a little concerned its a little too easy to be true but my faith in the reliability of Google's products make me feel safe to use it.

So fear not web surfers. The days of reading distorted letters to stop internet spammers should be over soon.

Until next time Happy Captcha-ing

SighFye