Is CAPTCHA Essential?

A CAPTCHA or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is basically a kind of test that helps to distinguish a computer from a human being. It is under the trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. You can visit http://www.protectwebform.com/ for detailed information on CAPTCHA.

After a CAPTCHA is installed, when there is an attempted access to the system there is a test given to determine if it is a human or a computer attempting access. Generally, CAPTCHA uses a picture of some distorted letters or numbers and asks for them to be retyped. A person can understand what the distorted letters are supposed to look like, while a computer cannot. Therefore, if the right answer is given, the test determines they are human. It's very easy to use and you can learn more about it at http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.

Website owners have to guard against spammers yet they need feedback from the visitors to their site. Spammers are always on the look out to grab your email id and use it for various purposes without your permission. One option is that you can go in for automated programs, called bots, to let them scan your website and parse out your mail id.

Another option is CAPTCHA that does not allow the spammers to get access to your email ids. Many websites and sign-up pages use CAPTHCA. It assumes that computer programs cannot read distorted characters. It is considered fairly reliable.

CAPTCHA can be said to be a program that has the capability to create tests which only humans can clear. The program is a fully automated program and no human intervention is required. Thus it is so much preferred by website owners. CAPTCHA has become very popular in the past few years.

The key to CAPTCHA is using it to stop spammers before they ever get access to your email. Once they have it, you have lost the game and they will be regularly sending you spam emails you don't want.

CAPTCHAs not only prevent encroachment by spammers for commercial purpose, it also protects the systems that are gullible to spam like, the webmail services of Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. They also help prevent automated postings on online blogs. There are some services which might allow automated use but within a limit. In such a scenario CAPTCHA helps in enforcing a usage policy and prevents any kind of deviation from the policy.

There have been numerous efforts at creating CAPTCHAs that are handier. Such endeavours usually include the use of JavaScript, mathematical questions (like "what is 1+1"), or simple questions requiring common sense (for instance "what color is the sky"). These attempts infringe on one or both of the philosophy of CAPTCHAs. Either they cannot be automatically created or they can be easily split given the condition of false intelligence. So, the only security these CAPTCHAs provide is safety through obscurity.

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