WebProNews

Tag: CAPTCHA

  • Google Goes ‘No CAPTCHA’

    Google Goes ‘No CAPTCHA’

    Google announced that it’s rolling out an API for reCAPTCHA, which it has dubbed “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA”.

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything much about reCAPTCHA. Google acquired the company in 2009, and has since been using it to make the CAPTCHA experience on websites less annoying, among other things. A couple years, ago, they started using it to crowdsource Street View addresses.

    Fast forward to today, and Google is giving sites and apps an API so they can have users easily verify that they’re humans. Instead of solving CAPTCHAs they can confirm with one click.

    It always seemed like there had to be a better way, didn’t it?

    “CAPTCHAs aren’t going away just yet,” Google notes, however. ‘In cases when the risk analysis engine can’t confidently predict whether a user is a human or an abusive agent, it will prompt a CAPTCHA to elicit more cues, increasing the number of security checkpoints to confirm the user is valid.”

    “This new API also lets us experiment with new types of challenges that are easier for us humans to use, particularly on mobile devices,” the company says. “In the example below, you can see a CAPTCHA based on a classic Computer Vision problem of image labeling. In this version of the CAPTCHA challenge, you’re asked to select all of the images that correspond with the clue. It’s much easier to tap photos of cats or turkeys than to tediously type a line of distorted text on your phone.”

    Snapchat, WordPress, and Humble Bundle are already using the new API, so users should start seeing the new method in place.

    Image via Google

  • Google Using ReCAPTCHA to Crowdsource Street View Addresses

    Gizmodo is reporting that ReCAPTCHA is now using street view address images its spam filter as one of those words you have to put in to verify you’re human. Their article quotes Google as saying:

    We’re currently running an experiment in which characters from Street View images are appearing in CAPTCHAs. We often extract data such as street names and traffic signs from Street View imagery to improve Google Maps with useful information like business addresses and locations. Based on the data and results of these reCaptcha tests, we’ll determine if using imagery might also be an effective way to further refine our tools for fighting machine and bot-related abuse online.

    Hopefully this means Street View will actually be useful beyond seeing how someone’s house looks, or searching for people caught unawares on camera.

    This phenomenon was popping up as recently as last weekend for some users:

    @dcfvg
    ■□    Google #recaptcha ( http://t.co/eUK5U5MK ) now asks for street numbers from street view ?? http://t.co/ri40VaXR 5 days ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is a spam filter designed to make sure only humans, not bots or other programs, can make it to certain web pages to leave comments or sign up for certain services. ReCAPTCHA takes words that cannot be read by computers and sticks them in CAPTCHA for a human to decipher. Since Google acquired the service back in 2009, it has already been used to digitize books, newspapers, and old time radio shows.

    (via Gizmodo)

  • Monetizing What Users Are Already Forced to Pay Attention To

    Peter Kafka at All Things Digital’s MediaMemo is reporting about a startup focused on advertising from the CAPTCHA. Solve Media aims to take a web element, which already requires user attention (the CAPTCHA) and monetize it through advertising. 

    It’s really not a bad idea, but it’s not exactly a new one either. We’ve seen examples of this in the past, though I can’t honestly say I’ve encountered it much in everyday web browsing. 

    Last year, Microsoft  applied for a patent for CAPTCHA advertising. Solve Media itself was talking about the concept months ago, back when it was called Adcopy.com.

    Solve Media from Solve Media on Vimeo.

    Perhaps the most surprising thing is that we haven’t seen Google do this kind of thing yet. Last year, shortly after Microsoft filed for that patent, Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that provided CAPTCHAs to over 100,000 sites around the web. 

    Google had other things in mind with that acquisition, however. This inolved reading and archiving printed materials. That’s not to say it isn’t something that could still happen.