# Phone Books in Recaptcha?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 20, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558 "2012-05-20T22:52:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Evil_Prince_Zorte)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558/1 "2012-05-20T22:52:29Z")

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I just got a Captcha with a phone number in it. When I googled the number, it was for Bloomfield-Montclair Ford in New Jersey. When I entered it, I got bounced for a “possible hacker attempt”

I wonder if directories are being scanned, and not just literature.

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**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558/2 "2012-05-22T15:25:40Z")

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There’s lots of stuff in there. Google has recently been getting [house addresses](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/google_recaptcha_street_view/) decoded this way.

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**Author:** ![janeslogin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558/3 "2012-05-22T22:22:25Z")

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Somewhere at one of the more serious online sites, perhaps nytimes or washingtonpost or newyorker there was a article within the last several days on how someone was using Captcha to correct old words that the OCR scanning got wrong. Perhaps try Googling reCaptcha for a starter should you be really keen on learning about it.

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**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2012, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phone-books-in-recaptcha/622558/4 "2012-05-23T04:30:44Z")

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A lot of old trade directories, as well as periodicals with ads, are part of the Google Books and Archive initiatives. But all the recaptchas I see seem to amalgamate portions of words so they would not be recognizable as words. I’d be quite surprised to see seven digits in a row that were originally lined up that way. More likely to have the end of one number and the beginning of another.

Every once in a while I get one in Fraktur. I just marvel that they somehow know I can read it.