Captcha Rant!

Captchas ... I hate them. They make me feel stupid, and I'm not.

I mean come on.. look at this one in the bottom right!!!

"Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." - well I don't feel human when I'm trying to figure them out.

It's like an "eye test", which is that very annoying way to place distorted letters and numbers, often overlapping, to prevent automatic entrance in a website or to stop people auto commenting on blogs.

These things annoy the piss out of me. Worst site recently... Ticketmaster.. it took me five goes to get one that I could get right... in the end I had to increase the page zoom level... ridiculous. 

I appreciate that they may be required to stop auto generated web entries, but I now read that there are programs out there that can break them routinely...grrrrr

Spammers trying to beat your Captcha are probably satisfied with a success ratio of 1/100 – because in just a few hours of repetition this can add up to hundreds of successful passes. A typical human user on the other hand probably throws in the towel after three consecutive failed attempts – at which point they'll most likely leave the website altogether.

Who can blame them? The average user doesn't understand why they should enter a random string of letters in the first place. It's not their problem and they do not care what it is for. For them it's some sort of annoying puzzle that stands in the way of doing what they want to do. Not being able to pass it, makes them feel inadequate and frustrated.

I would like to see the end to Captchas.

And for anyone who is going to tell me to use the disabled button for the audio version.. have you listened to one?  The sound is distorted and incomprehensible, so I will be leaving with my mouse to visit sites that don't make me feel inadequate....