# Image verification fields anger me **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 11, 2008, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702 "2008-12-11T10:47:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HumanMonkeyGod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c67d28/32.png) [@HumanMonkeyGod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HumanMonkeyGod)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/1 "2008-12-11T10:47:27Z")
Whenever you want to join a board now you have to beat these things. What ARE they supposed to be rooting out? Bots? Humans? Robots with optical character recognition? I’m particularly impressed with sites where they don’t tell you how many characters are in the image, or where case matters. So when I see some bendy line and my own pattern recognition equipment becomes confused as to whether it’s a bendy line or an s or an S. The colours schemes too, are amazing to behold on a laptop screen with variable lighting conditions. Greys really come alive on off-white shaded backgrounds. The Google image is the only one I find can read and get right in one, all others require retries. Stupid fucking images. Fuck all of you and your fucking characters. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/2 "2008-12-11T11:29:37Z")
> [@HumanMonkeyGod](#): > > Robots with optical character recognition? Yes. Hence the deliberate difficult visibility - an attempt to prevent bot OCR from defeating them. I hate them too, but I hate comment spam even more. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/3 "2008-12-11T11:43:38Z")
Hi **HumanMonkeyGod**! Would you like to enlarge your penis while making $$$ in your spare time ? Vote for the Nigerian Prime Minister NOW and you’ll get a prize ! ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/4 "2008-12-11T11:44:32Z")
> [@](#): > > What ARE they supposed to be rooting out? Bots? As I understand it, bots, mostly. We get oodles of spammers here. Many are put off because we require a valid email address, and need email confirmation. I don’t know if we use images or not. I’ve had to enter a few distorted images myself, on other websites, and I agree that sometimes they’re impossible to make out. However, I’ve seen other sites taken over by spammerbots, and it’s not pretty. What used to be vibrant, informative, and interesting boards will become simply filled with spam, and trying to pick through the trash for the occasional gem is just not worth it. If someone could come up with a better way, I’d love to embrace it. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/5 "2008-12-11T12:05:42Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > As I understand it, bots, mostly. We get oodles of spammers here. Many are put off because we require a valid email address, and need email confirmation. I don’t know if we use images or not. I’ve had to enter a few distorted images myself, on other websites, and I agree that sometimes they’re impossible to make out. However, I’ve seen other sites taken over by spammerbots, and it’s not pretty. What used to be vibrant, informative, and interesting boards will become simply filled with spam, and trying to pick through the trash for the occasional gem is just not worth it. > > If someone could come up with a better way, I’d love to embrace it. There is one : asking a simple factual question that anyone could answer to, but a machine couldn’t. Stuff like “what colour is the sky ?” or “How many States are there ?”. I’ve seen that kind of stuff on a few boards/blog comment thingies, but it’s not really widespread - it’s obviously impossible to randomly generate such questions, and a finite list is bound to get cracked sooner or later (assuming the board using it is popular enough that someone, somewhere would make the effort to upgrade his spambot for that particular forum) ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/6 "2008-12-11T12:21:22Z")
I should probably say at this point that I am not the person who makes security decisions for the SDMB, and I don’t do technical administrative stuff. I use the vBulletin admin tools on this board, but I don’t do really techy stuff. IOW, I’m not the one who will implement new security devices. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/7 "2008-12-11T13:00:45Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > There is one : asking a simple factual question that anyone could answer to, but a machine couldn’t. Stuff like “what colour is the sky ?” or “How many States are there ?”. > > I’ve seen that kind of stuff on a few boards/blog comment thingies, but it’s not really widespread - it’s obviously impossible to randomly generate such questions, and a finite list is bound to get cracked sooner or later (assuming the board using it is popular enough that someone, somewhere would make the effort to upgrade his spambot for that particular forum) I’ve seen that, questions like “2+2 = ?” and “Are you a human?”… together with the LSD letter soup… for validating a frigging forum _search_… **every.single.bleeping.search**. It made me want to punt a puppy across the room and out the window. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/8 "2008-12-11T15:09:31Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > I’ve seen that, questions like “2+2 = ?” and “Are you a human?”… together with the LSD letter soup… for validating a frigging forum _search_… **every.single.bleeping.search**. > > It made me want to punt a puppy across the room and out the window. What on earth makes you not want to punt a puppy the rest of the time? It’s great fun. I humbly submit that a trivia quiz will probably be even worse at rooting out bots and even better at blocking genuine users. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/9 "2008-12-11T15:53:02Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > I’ve seen that, questions like “2+2 = ?” and “Are you a human?”… together with the LSD letter soup… for validating a frigging forum _search_… **every.single.bleeping.search**. > > It made me want to punt a puppy across the room and out the window. Trivia AND word salad ? Somebody’s putting belt and suspenders on his forum. Way overkill if you ask me (In case you’re wondering why put a validation on a search : because searches use the board server’s processor, and you can quite easily shut one down by maliciously flooding it with searches.). Still, I’d say an annoying letter jamboree per search is better than the obnoxious “wait at least 90 seconds before next search” method they’ve chosen on another forum I lurk on. Infuckingfuriating when you’ve made a stupid typo or need to add a term to a given search… I get why they do that but knowing it, while being half the battle, doesn’t change the puppy-punting factor one milli-iota. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/10 "2008-12-11T16:05:33Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Still, I’d say an annoying letter jamboree per search is better than the obnoxious “wait at least 90 seconds before next search” method they’ve chosen on another forum I lurk on. Whoa! I’d NEVER post on a forum that made you wait that long between searches! :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/11 "2008-12-11T16:13:46Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > There is one : asking a simple factual question that anyone could answer to, but a machine couldn’t. Stuff like “what colour is the sky ?” or “How many States are there ?”. Like a mini Turing test? ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/12 "2008-12-11T16:20:31Z")
I don’t mind the math ones I come across, but the series of gobbledygook ones that mix cases, fonts, numbers and letters (is that an 0 or an O? I guess I won’t know 'til i type everything in for the third time) really get on my nerves. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/13 "2008-12-11T16:30:25Z")
I heartily support this Pitting. Surfing on Safari, I get the little “picture can’t be seen question mark” with the letter soup, too, sometimes. On the plus side, when I open the image in a new window, the letters are displayed in a normal font that I can actually read. It’s all a pain in the ass though, entering and re-entering your best guess as to what the hell those squiggles are supposed to be or opening a new window and typing the code in. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/14 "2008-12-11T16:36:47Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Hi **HumanMonkeyGod**! > Would you like to enlarge your penis while making $$$ in your spare time ? Vote for the Nigerian Prime Minister NOW and you’ll get a prize ! Well if he isn’t interested I certainly am,just sign me up! Plus the word on the grapevine is you can get me a really good deal on Cess Pit installation and Herbal Generic Viagra. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/15 "2008-12-12T01:25:28Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Like a mini Turing test? But we couldn’t just have a small set of questions, or the bots could just learn them and then keep a small set of answers. So we’d have to automate the whole process. Some sort of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/16 "2008-12-12T01:50:06Z")
They’ve already gotten past the simple question ones. You set up a site offering free porn, redirect the questions from the site you want to the porn site, and let the hoards of guys attracted by the porn answer the questions for you and just redirect their answer back to the site in question. The image ones are a bit harder to bypass, but they’re certainly working on that too. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/17 "2008-12-12T13:00:31Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > But we couldn’t just have a small set of questions, or the bots could just learn them and then keep a small set of answers. So we’d have to automate the whole process. > > Some sort of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. A crazy idea but it just might work. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/18 "2008-12-12T17:15:07Z")
I’ve said before, not completely in jest, that the world’s first true A.I. will be a spambot. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2008, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/19 "2008-12-13T07:21:55Z")
I just saw a new Captcha that was a good idea - the distortion came in an animation of it rippling. It made it easier to read than if it was still. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2008, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702/20 "2008-12-13T08:08:19Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’ve said before, not completely in jest, that the world’s first true A.I. will be a spambot. The world’s first true AI will be a spam filter. ‘Spambots’ will become really cheap third-world labor. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/image-verification-fields-anger-me/476702.md?page=2)