CAPTCHA has been around for a while now and has become such a standard part of any online registration system that we simply accept it as it is – annoying. Is that an ‘O’ or a ‘Q’? An ‘S’ or the number ‘5’? Does that word exist? We scratch our heads and muddle through, but do we ever stop to think that there might be a better way to verify our humanity?
There are exciting new companies doing that very thing, and they’ve come up with some intriguing possibilities. We’ve compiled a few trending ideas in the running to replace CAPTCHA, so read on, and have a look.
Logic Questions
Simply asking the user a question that’s easy for human logic to deduce, but difficult for an algorithm to determine, is a popular idea among advocates for alternatives to CAPTCHA systems. Here are a few examples of logic questions that would be easy for a human, but perhaps not so simple for a spambot:
In the word ‘spam’, what is the third letter?
Given the numbers 14, 88, ninety-three, and 22, which is the lowest?
What is fourteen-thousand five-hundred written as digits?
Unfortunately, this method is ultimately doomed to fail. Simply because it is difficult for a computer to determine the answer does not mean it is impossible. As computers continue to get faster and smart (think that IBM’s Watson already exists), this is not the best solution going forward.
User Interaction
This idea relates to the idea of using logic questions in that it asks the user to perform a task that would be exceedingly difficult, and perhaps impossible (right now) for a computer to complete. Taking it further than simple question-and-answer logic, though, these systems would have the user perform a physical act.
For example, one of the companies currently advocating this idea makes apps that require a person to slide a cursor to the end of a line to prove that they are human. This, too, is yet another method that’s doomed to fail. Not only is it inaccessible for people with certain special needs, but it is likely that a script could eventually be developed to move their bot’s cursor and, thus, the app’s slider.
Image Recognition
Image Recognition, like the systems put forward by Confident Technologies, have the best possible chance of not only making CAPTCHA systems easier for current users, but also keeping spambots at bay for a long time to come. While no one can say that they’ve defeated spambots forever, it will be a while before a computer is able to successfully analyze images in the way that Confident CAPTCHA does.
It’s called Image-Based Multi-Factor Authentification, and here’s how it works – when you’re registering for a new website and going through the steps to create your account, the normal CAPTCHA gibberish is gone. Instead, it’s replaced by a series of images and a simple task – pick the subject of the image. That’s it, quest complete.
This seems so simple as to be the most beatable, but when you’re talking about spambots, that’s simply not the case. Bots have no eyes, they rely strictly upon data to complete their programmed tasks. Images, when broken down into data, do not reveal a subject at all. Just zeroes and ones.
Even our smartest Watsons can’t tell if a specific series of zeroes and ones is the Empire State Building or just a steak sandwich. In this battle of human versus bot, the human has the advantage of a brain that’s programmed to interpret a visual pattern on a screen. Until the spambots grow eyes, this technology puts the humans ahead of the game.