captcha to defeat form spammers

[Stan Brown]

Can anyone give me a URL for a reputable CAPTCHA which I can use on my
webpage?

No, no one can give such a URL because CAPTCHA is fundamentally
flawed. It's not just that there are better or worse implementations,
it's that the whole idea is unworkable.

As Jukka said when you started this thread:

Google for captcha (perhaps with w3c as extra keyword) to get
enlightened.

I'll go one further and give you a specific URL:
http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/

Read that, and stop sighing after flawed concepts. Just like
challenge-response, CAPTCHA is a misguided "solution" to a real
problem.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

 

[Philip Baker]

Unfortunately for CAPTCHAs, image processing software is able to
defeat any capture that might be easy for a person to read... The
eventual consequence will be CAPTCHAs that no-one can read.

Of course, the reason they're a bad idea is encoded into their name. A
Turing test is where a human tries to distinguish between a human and
a computer. Since no computer program has passed the test, no computer
program is qualified to administer the test by definition... (and even
then it'd be the wrong test - automatic isn't necessarily spam, manual
isn't necessarily not spam)

Conversely, a very simply written spamfilter will catch >99.9% of
spam. It's nowhere near as complex a problem as email spam. The big
giveaway is unexpected URL markup in the content, but adding a few
other regex-based tests helps.

That is the obvious solution for 99.9% of cases and so far I have found
it effective. It is the big sites that have the real problem. For
instance Yahoo, that want to block the automated creation of thousands
of accounts which can then be used for nefarious purposes like spamming
Yahoo Groups. What besides CAPTCHA can these sites use?

Day by day I'm getting more depressed with the Internet which seems to
be sinking in a swamp of spam. All the methods being used against it are
just fire-fighting and not getting to the root of the problem.

 

[Charlie]

Are you the same Tina from the old WebServePro days? Once upon a time, I had
my hosting through them (dccomm). But when another company managed to take
over, the customer service went through the floor and I had to find another
host - not only that, but I was unable to get the transfer information for
my domain (it had been locked), so I had to register a new one. If you are
the same Tina, let me know and I will send some business to Axis. The
customer service at the original WebServePro was great.

Charlie

 

[Tina Peters]

Are you the same Tina from the old WebServePro days? Once upon a time, I had
my hosting through them (dccomm). But when another company managed to take
over, the customer service went through the floor and I had to find another
host - not only that, but I was unable to get the transfer information for
my domain (it had been locked), so I had to register a new one. If you are
the same Tina, let me know and I will send some business to Axis. The
customer service at the original WebServePro was great.

Hey Charlie. WebServePro...wow. That brings me back almost a decade! I
just tried to take a look a their website, for old time sake, and it seems
to be down.

Anyway, yeah....axishost.com is mine.

--Tina

 

[Neredbojias]

That's not what Stan was referring to. Gross misspellings like "bits
if information" are not confidence-builders.


For one thing, charging $10 for "2 small unencoded php files" is
beyond silly, and verging on dishonest. It's like charging for "hello
world".

Hah! You ought to try a few those (many) "unlimited music download"
sites which pop up in Google searches for d/l-able music. Some actually
charge for the "privelege" of downloading a _freeware_ music-sharing
program! Yeah, I got suckered once - because I didn't read carefully
enough, perhaps. I was looking for sites that charged on a per song
basis, not for whole cds.

 

[Charlie]

Hey Charlie. WebServePro...wow. That brings me back almost a decade! I
just tried to take a look a their website, for old time sake, and it seems
to be down.

Anyway, yeah....axishost.com is mine.

--Tina

Wish I'd have known that prior to signing with my current host.Not that they
are bad,as a matter of fact, I like them. But I did appreciate the
WebServePro staff's willingness to help (on the three or so times I needed
it in the few years I was there). The folks at Net1 managed to ruin what, at
one time, was a good thing. Anyway,I will definately send you some business
in the future. Good to see you around again.

Charlie