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Captchas Go To The Dogs, Cats
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2007-06-13
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Those strings of distorted letters and numbers are supposed to make things hard on spammers - not innocent users. But as spammers have gotten smarter, those captchas have gotten harder to read, and many companies are looking for a new type of defense. Pictures of Fluffy and Fido may provide exactly that.
 | | Captchas Go To The Dogs, Cats |  |
"Microsoft researchers have developed an alternative captcha that asks Internet users to view nine images of household pets and then select just the cats or the dogs," reported Brad Stone of The New York Times. I, for one, would much rather look at a bunch of animals than a bunch of warped "one"s. Or are those "ell"s?
John Douceur, who works at Microsoft as a research, explained to Stone that this system should also have some practical benefits. "For software, this is wildly hard," he said (in reference to identifying the animals). "Computers are tripped up by all the photos at different angles, with variable lighting conditions and backgrounds and the animals in different positions."
Another practical benefit: some of the animals in those captchas may find homes. Microsoft's system, dubbed Asirra, is using pictures from Petfinder.com, which currently features over 200,000 "adoptable pets."
"In exchange, we provide a small 'Adopt Me!' link beneath each photo, supporting Petfinder's primary mission of finding homes for homeless animals," states Asirra's home page.
As they provide greater security against spammers, and may also help homeless pets, it's hard to see a downside to cat- and dog-centric captchas.
Tags: Captchas, Asirra, Petfinder
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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