CAPTCHA Didn’t Save Us, Nothing Will
We still haven’t found the online identity verification magic bullet
Image CAPTCHAs are a surefire way to make you feel like an idiot. How many of us have failed to properly identify all the squares with traffic lights, intersections, boats, or bicycles?
The images sometimes feature a slice so small of the object in question that you can never be sure if it’s a bike, car, or Bert’s yellow conehead.
The problem is we’ve been struggling for well over a decade with how to identify online interactions as those done by a real human, and I don’t think we’re getting any better at it.
Over a decade ago, I wrote the above column in PC Magazine about my ill-fated quest to buy Hannah Montana tickets (yes, Miley Cyrus in her still touring as herself and her alter ego phase). At the time, the effort was sabotaged by some software from a company called RMG Technologies. It auto-solved the original CAPTCHA, which was primarily difficult-to-decipher text. The images were designed to defeat basic online optical character recognition (OCR) systems, making it near impossible for online bots to decipher, grab…
