# They now have a less frustrating captcha, pictures instead of words **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 2, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729 "2009-07-02T19:11:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Brainiac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8797f3/32.png) [@Brainiac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729/1 "2009-07-02T19:11:10Z")
Maybe it’s not that new but new to me Anyway, some sites drive me nuts with subtle captcha tests, those blurry words that you type “to show you’re human”. Apparently Goggle and Craigslist worry a lot about non-humans learning to decipher degraded text. So they make images that are too tricky for even humans to read the first one, two, or five times. Good sites let you pick a new image but some just sit there like dopes playing charades making you guess again and again. Photos, though, seem to be less well adapted to machines. The captcha on this site asks you to “Select all images that contain a boat” Some boats are large, some small, some the main image and some in the background. But still clearly boats. [www.privacyharbor.com/app/registration.htm](http://www.privacyharbor.com/app/registration.htm) I can only hope it catches on. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729/2 "2009-07-02T20:06:34Z")
When I see something like that which, once seen, seems so obvious, I always go: :smack: why didn’t _I_ think that? It is a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729/3 "2009-07-02T21:27:20Z")
I wonder how fussy they are - I just went there and was asked to click on all images that contain a fish. Two pictures are clearly fish. Three pictures are clearly birds, but one pic is of a pelican with the tail end of a fish sticking out of its beak. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729/4 "2009-07-02T23:45:13Z")
I like that a lot. I have a bit of red-green colour blindness, and I’ve come across some captchas that were literally impossible for me to read. ---
**Author:** ![Fetchund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b2d939/32.png) [@Fetchund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fetchund)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-now-have-a-less-frustrating-captcha-pictures-instead-of-words/501729/5 "2009-07-03T00:42:38Z")
On Nova the other night, they had a story about the guy that invented Captcha - they mentioned that the Captchas that have two words are serving a dual purpose that is kind of cool. One word is a known word, so the computer can decide you are real. The other is a word that the computer was not able to decipher from a scanned text. If you type in that one correctly also, you are helping with a project to digitize thousands of old printed documents.