Captcha's + Differnet Possibilities - captcha

I wanted to run some captcha possibities past people to see if they are easily by passed by bots etc.
What if colors were used - eg: there is a string of 10 characters are you ask people to type the red characters of where there are 5? Easy to bypass?
I've noticed a captcha on plentyoffish that involves typing in the characters under the circles. This seems a touch more complex - would this be more challenging for bots?
The other idea I was thinking was putting the requirement in an image as well meaning like in no. 1 above - you can put "type the red characters" in an image and this could change with different colors. Any value here?
Interested in what people think.
cheers

Colours are easy to bypass. A bot just takes the red channel and gets the answer. It is even easier than choosing between many possible solutions. The same applies to any noise that has another colour than the letters the user needs to find.
Symbols that don't touch the letters are very easy to ignore. Why would a bot even look at those circles that probably always stay at the same position? (valid but wasn't asked here)
Identifying circles or other symbols is easier than identifying letters, if one can do the latter, a simple symbol is no challenge.

I think captchas are used too frequently in places where they aren't the best tool. For instance, are you trying to prevent registration spam? Why use a captcha rather than email validation?
What are your intentions and have you considered alternatives to the (relatively ineffective) captcha technology?
As a side note, if you have to use them, I prefer KittyAuth myself :) http://thepcspy.com/kittenauth/#5

Color blind people will have trouble separating red from green letters. People who have trouble reading and understanding descriptions, or have other disabilities may have trouble reading the captchas too.
In some of these, the texts are so mangled that almost everyone has a hard time reading them.
I think captcha's, if used at all, should be quite easy to read. The one with the dots and triangles is doable, although it's a matter of time before someone writes an algorithm to hack them. It is very easy for computers to read this kind too.
The best way to deal with this, is increase moderation. Make your site so that it isn't rewarding to spam it at all. Don't make it the problem of your users.
Also, if you're gonna use captcha's, it may be better to build something yourself than to use common libraries. I've found that these are easier hacked, probably because it is more rewarding to write a captcha solver for something that is used by thhousands of sites.

No matter which CAPTCHA you construct, spammers will find a way to work around it, given enough incentive. Large CAPTCHA services like reCAPTCHA, for instance, get bypassed by outsourcing solving them to cheap labor in India(source).
If you run a small site, your best bet is to make your own mini-CAPTCHA, which asks a simple question. If it isn't a standard question, isn't a standard CAPTCHA module and isn't a large site, it isn't worth it for the spammers to automate bypassing it.
I've been working on a community site for an organization at my university, and we've had trouble with spammers registering, despite us using every CAPTCHA module in the book. As soon as we made our own simple one-question CAPTCHA, all spam stopped. The key to preventing this sort of spam often lies in uniqueness.

Related

Negative Captchas - help me understand spam bots better

I have to decide a technique to prevent spam bots from registering my site. In this question I am mainly asking about negative captchas.
I came to know about many weaknesses of bots but want to know more. I read somewhere that majority of bots do not render/support javascript. Why is it so? How do I test that the visiting program can't evaluate javascript?
I started with this question Need suggestions/ideas for easy-to-use but secure captchas
Please answer to that question if you have some good captcha ideas.
Then I got ideas about negative captchas here
http://damienkatz.net/2007/01/negative_captch.html
But Damien has written that though this technique likely won't work on big community sites (for long), it will work just fine for most smaller sites.
So, what are the chances of somebody making site-specific bots? I assume my site will be a very popular one. How much safe this technique will be considering that?
Negative captchas using complex honeypot implementations here described here
http://nedbatchelder.com/text/stopbots.html
Does anybody know how easily can it be implemented? Are there some plugins available?
Thanks,
Sandeepan
I read somewhere that majority of bots do not render/support javascript. Why is it so?
Simplicity of implementation — you can read web page source and post forms with just dozen lines of code in high-level languages. I've seen bots that are ridiculously bad, e.g. parsing HTML with regular expressions and getting ../ in URLs wrong. But it works well enough apparently.
However, running JavaScript engine and implementing DOM library is much more complex task. You have to deal with scripts that do while(1);, that depend on timers, external resources, CSS, sniff browsers and do lots of crazy stuff. The amount of work you need to do quickly starts looking like writing a full browser engine.
It's also computationally much much expensive, so probably it's not as profitable for spammers — they can have dumb bot that silently spams 100 pages/second, or fully-featured one that spams 2 pages/second and hogs victim's computer like a typical web browser would.
There's middle ground in implementing just a simple site-specific hack, like filling in certain form field if known script pattern is noticed in the page.
So, what are the chances of somebody making site-specific bots? I assume my site will be a very popular one. How much safe this technique will be considering that?
It's a cost/benefit trade-off. If you have high pagerank, lots of visitors or something of monetary value, or useful for spamming, then some spammer might notice you and decide workaround is worth his time. OTOH if you just have a personal blog or small forum, there's million others unprotected waiting to be spammed.
How do I test that the visiting program can't evaluate javascript?
Create a hidden field with some fixed value, then write a js which increments or changes it and you will see in the response..

Another answer to the CAPTCHA problem? [closed]

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Most sites at least employ server access log checking and banning along with some kind of bot prevention measure like a CAPTCHA (those messed-up text images).
The problem with CAPTCHAs is that they poss a threat to the user experience. Luckily they now come with user friendly features like refresh and audio versions.
Anyway, like linux vs windows, it isn't worth the time of a spammer to customize and/or build a script to handle a custom CAPTCHA example that only pertains to one site. Therefore, I was wondering if there might be better ways to handle the whole CAPTCHA thing.
In A Better CAPTCHA Peter Bromberg mentions that one way would be to convert the image to HTML and display it embedded in the page. On http://shiflett.org/ Chris simply asks users to type his name into an input. Examples like this are ways to simplifying the CAPTCHA experience while decreasing the value for spammers. Does anyone know of more good examples I could use or see any problem with the embedded image idea?
Image presented as HTML table is just a technical speed bump. There's no difficulty in extraction of pixels from such document.
IMHO CAPTCHA puts focus on a wrong thing – you're not interested whether there's a human on the other side. You wouldn't like human to spam you either. So take a step back and focus on spam:
Analyze text (look for spammy keywords, use bayesian filtering)
Analyze links (blacklist spammy domains – SURBL, LinkSleeve)
Look at traffic patterns and block floods
There's no single perfectly accurate method, but you can use few of them and weight the result to get pretty close.
Have a look at source code of Sblam! (it's a completely transparent server-side comment spam filter).
Alternatives to captchas are going to be to consider the problem from other angles. The reason for this is because captchas are built around the idea that a human and computer actor can be distinguished. As Artificial intelligence progresses, this will always become an increasingly difficult problem as the gap between computer and human users shrinks.
The technique used here on slashdot is for other users of the site to act as gatekeepers, marking abuse and removing offending posts before they become noticeable to a wide audience.
Another technique is to detect spam-like posts directly, using the same technology used to filter spam from email. Obviously it isn't 100% effective for email, and wont be for other uses, either, but if you can filter out 75% of the spam with very few false positives being filtered, then other techniques will only have to deal with the remaining 25%.
Keep a log of spam-related activity, so that you can track trends about offending ip addresses, content of posts, claimed user agent, and so forth, so that you can block abusive users at a routing level.
In nearly all cases, your users would rather put up with the slight inconvenience of abuse prevention, than the huge inconvenience of a major spam problem.
Ultimately, the arms race between you and spammers is one of cost-benefit. Initially, it will cost spammers close to nothing to spam your site, but you can change that to make it very difficult. Even if they continue to spam your site, the benefit they recieve will never grow beyond a few innocent users falling for their schemes. Once the cost of spamming rises sharply above the benefit, the spammers will go away.
Another way to benefit from that is to allow advertising on your site. Make it inexpensive (but not free, of course) and easy for legitimate advertisers to post responsible marketing material for your users to see. Would be spammers may find that it is a better deal to just pay you a few dollars and get their offering seen than to pursue clandestine methods.
Obviously most spammers won't fit in this category, since that is often more about getting your users to fall victim to malware exploits. You can do your part for that by encouring users to use modern, up to date browsers or plugins so that they become less vulnerable to those same exploits.
This article describes a technique based on hashed field names (changing with each page view) with some of them being honeypot fields (i.e. the request is rejected if they're filled) that are hidden from human users via various techniques.
Basically, it relies on spam scripts not being sophisticated enough to determine which form fields are actually visible. In a way, that is a CAPTCHA, since in order to solve it reliably, not only would they have to implement HTML, CSS and JavaScript fully, they'd also have to recognize when a field is too small to see, colored the same as the background, hidden behind another field, placed outside the browser's viewport, etc.
It's the same basic problem that makes Web Standards a farce: there is no algorithm to determine whether a webpage "looks right" - only a human can decide that.
seen this?
It's a system with cute pictures instead of captcha ;)
But I still think honeypots are a better solution - they're so cheap&easy&invisible
I really think that Dinah hit the nail on the head. The fact seems to be that the beauty of the whole CAPTCHA setup is that there is no standard. Standardizing would only help the market to be more profitable.
Therefore it seems that the best way to handle the CAPTCHA problem is to come up with a fairly hard system for bots to catch that is NOT used by anyone else on the planet. It could be a question system, a very custom image creator, or even a mix of JS calls that only browsers respect.
By the time that your site is big enough for spammers to care you should have the budget to rethink your CAPTCHA setup and optimize it much more. In the mean time we should be monitoring our server logs and banning bad agents, refers, and IP's.
In my case I created a CAPTCHA image that I believe is very different from any other CAPTCHA I have seen. This should do fine for now along side my Apache logs + htaccess banning and Aksimet checking. Maybe I should spend time on a reporting feature as well.
although not a true image captcha, good turing test is asking users a random question - common options are: is ice hot or cold? 5+2= ..? etc.

Hallway usability testing: How much of the UI do you actually make functional?

When doing hallway usability tests do most of you make your apps fully or near fully functional? Or do you just make sure the links or flow chain correctly? Or do you just draw on paper and go with that?
I'm would like to test early on a prototype and am trying to find a good balance. But at the same time am worried that some non functional parts might actually not give representative results.
Thanks.
Usability tests, hallway or otherwise, only need the functionality that you need to test. In most usability tests, you should go in with specific design questions to answer and develop your prototype to the point where it can answer those questions. For example, if you need to test if users understand your indication of the sort order for a table, all you need is a paper picture of the table showing the sort indication (with the table contents blurred) and ask them how the table is sorted. If you need to test the IA, all you need is a bunch of web pages, empty except for a title, that are linked through the navigation menus.
You only need the pages relevant for the tasks you give your users. If you’re just testing the IA, then you only need the pages on the normative path. If you are also testing error recovery, then you need the pages off the normative path along with the full navigation controls. If you are also testing error detection, then you need content on the pages as well.
You can also simulate functionality when that’s easier to do. For example, in testing if users can figure out how to get a desired sort order, when the user clicks on a non-functioning control for sorting the table, you can say, “Okay, doing that will get you this,” and you take the mouse and select a bookmark that shows the table in the new sort order.
In hallway testing, if users breach the fidelity envelope, you can simply say, “I haven’t made that part yet. Let’s go back to A, and continue from there.” Of course, you should note that the user made a wrong turn in the task you intended for them. I haven’t had any problems with users complaining about non-functional features when I tell them up front it’s an incomplete prototype and we’re only testing the UI for features x, y, and z at the moment.
For low fidelity prototypes, I often call them “mockups” or “drawings” to users rather than “prototypes” to indicate the low functionality. You can put obvious placeholders in for missing content (e.g., “Blah, blah, blah…”, “TODO: Picture of product about here.”). If a user comments on something outside the fidelity envelope (e.g., “This symbol should be red to stand out more”), simply note it, and say that topic is under development (e.g., “Thanks. We haven’t started work on the colors yet. We’re just trying to figure out how to organize the site right now.”).
Usability testing with limited-fidelity prototypes is really necessary for iterative design to be feasible for most projects. Otherwise, you waste too much work developing things that have to be redone.
A couple things to remember:
Test early and often.
The goal of usability testing is to find problems with the UI, not Q/A your code.
Therefore, if users can see the parts of your UI you are interested in testing and interact with them in a realistic way (e.g., click on buttons and links), you should be able to collect useful data. If some links are dead-ends, that's okay, as long as there's some way for users to recover and continue on. Basically, with prototypes, the "correct" path should work, but it's okay if incorrect paths don't (as long as there's a reasonably quick way to get back on the correct path). Even static storyboards (non-functioning drawings of a UI) can provide you with some information if you ask the right questions, e.g., "What would you do on this screen if you wanted to view your shopping cart?").
I would suggest a couple rounds of usability testing. First on paper, perhaps later on screen, generally throughout the application lifecycle (take an Agile approach to it).
There is a good argument to be made for paper prototypes. When users see a screen, even limited functionality, they may be hesitant to suggest changes since it looks "done."
Make no mistake, it's not trivial to get it all down on paper, but that's where I would start. Probably start with just a section or two of the application. And make sure somebody with good people skills and/or explaining skills is there to walk the user through it. Have a second person on-hand to take notes. Try to ask open-ended questions, etc.
For a hallway test, I would test with NONE of the functionality implemented.
Test against designs done on a whiteboard or on paper. You'll be surprised at how much you find out in these minimal mockups. And they are very inexpensive to make!
Functional prototypes are for later. If you give your usability subject a functional interface, they are much less likely to question whether you've implemented the right set of features in the first place.
I would make the UI functional, so that the user can really play with it, it will be much better than a static image. People can tell you whether they feel comfortable on the UI.
I would make sure everything in the UI works, or at least takes you to a clear, unambiguous message pointing out that the feature isn't implemented yet.
Showing prototypes to clients with a disclaimer up front about how feature X doesn't work yet will usually be ignored. They'll try out the prototype, click on featuree X and indignantly reply "Feature X doesn't work! This really needs to work in the final version! Why doesn't it work?". The client is confused and unhappy about the product, and it's frustrating for yourself because it overshadows the positive feedback. Besides, you told them it didn't work, why can't they use their imagination to envision how it would work in the final version?
Make it work, be it with a rough version, dummy data, or even a simple message saying "would show results sorted alphabetically now".

How can I think like a user? [closed]

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We're neck deep in a project right now, schedules are tight (but reasonable). Our general strategy is to get a strong beta done, release it for testing, and get feedback from our testers.
Quite frequently, we're being hit by small things that spiral into long, time-costing discussions. They all boil down to one thing: While we know what features we need, we are having trouble with the little details, things like 'where should this message go' and 'do they need this feedback immediately, or will it break their flow, so we should hold off'?
These are all things that our testers SHOULD catch, but
a) Each 'low priority' bug like this drains time from critical issues
b) We want to have as strong a product as possible
and
c) Even the best testing group will miss things from time to time.
We use our product, and we know how our users use the old version...but we're all at a loss as to how to think like a user when we try to use the new version (which has significant graphical as well as underlying changes).
edit - a bit more background:
We're writing a web app used by a widely-distributed base of users. Our app is a big part of their jobs, but not the biggest (and, of course, we only matter to them when it doesn't work). Getting actual users in to use our product is difficult, as we're geographically distant from the nearest location that serves as an end user (We're in Ohio, and I think the nearest location we serve is 3+ hours away).
The closest we can get is our Customer Service team (who have been a big help, really) but they don't really think like the users either. They also serve as our testers (it really motivates them to find bugs when they know that any they DON'T find may mean a big upswing in number of calls). We've had three (of about 12 total) customer service reps back here most of the week doing some preliminary testing...they've gotten involved in the discussions as well.
Watching someone using the app is a huge benefit to me. Possibly someone who is not entirely familiar with it.
Seeing how they try to navigate, how they try to enter information or size windows. Things we take for granted after creating/running the app hour after hour, day after day.
Users will always try and do things you never expected and watching them in action might bring to light how you can change something that might have seemed minor, but really makes a big impact on them.
Read Don't make me think.
Speaking generally, you can't. There's not any way you can turn off the "programmer" part of your brain and think like a user.
And you're right about (c), testing groups don't necessarily catch all the bugs. But the best thing you can do is get a testing group comprised of real, honest-to-goodness end users, and value their feedback. Draw further conclusions from their general comments.
If you want to know how your users will see your system, the closest you can get is usability testing with real users. Everything else is just heuristics and experience, and is also subject to error. There's no such thing as a bug-free product, but you should be able to get a "strong" product with usability testing.
Buy a cheap, easy to use video camera and record your testers using the app. Even better, get some people unfamiliar with the app. to use it and video them. It's relatively cheap, and you'd be surprised what it will highlight.
I like policy of "eating your own dog food"("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one's_own_dog_food). It brings you one step closer, because you become a user, although you might think like one.
Try to use your app when you are very hurry (e.g. you have someone who waits for a dinner).
You will see all this little things because you have to wait, you have to go back to the mouse of the keyboard, etc.
And also, make your wife use it. Or your mother.
Another useful test : help someone to use it, by phone. If he can't find the button with your directions, that's probably a bug.
The important thing is to get enough information that you yourself can become a "user". Once you do that you can answer most questions yourself.
The way I always do this is to go talk with them about what they need to do, what they typically do, and how they use their current tools to do it. Then (very important) sit with them while they do it. Make sure you get on with them well enough that you can come back to them with questions about how they handle edge cases you think of later (often the answer will be the appalling "we go around the system manually for that").
I will almost always notice something they are doing that is a royal PITA that they didn't bring up because they are used to having to do that and don't know any better. I will always notice that their %90 typical workflow isn't the easiest workflow the tools provide.
You can't really rely on plain old-fashioned requirements gathering by itself, because that is asking them to think like a developer. They generally don't know what is possible to do with your software, what is easy, and what is hard. Also they typically have no clue on GUI design principles. If you ask them for design input they will just tell you to put any new control on their favorite page, until the thing looks like a 747 control panel.
The problem is often that even the users don't know what they want until they are actually working with the software. Sometimes, a small oversight can be a big usability problem, sometimes a well thought out function that was requested by many users sees only little use.
My suggestions to decrease the risk of not implementing the right usability features:
Take a look at users actually doing their day to day work. Even if they use another software or no software at all. You will be able to determine the artifacts they often need to get their job done. You will see what data they frequently need. Concentrate on the artifacts, data and workflows most used. They should be the most usable. Exotic workflows may be a bit more time consuming for the users than often used workflows.
Use working prototypes of the GUI to let users work through a realistic workflow. Watch them and note what hinders them and what works well. Adjust your prototypes accordingly.
If an issue arises in an often-used part of your software, it is time to discuss it now and in details. If the issue concerns a seldom used part, make it a low priority issue and discuss it if you have the time. If issues or suggestions are low priority, they should stay low priority. If you can't determine if solution A or solution B is the best, don't run in circles with the same arguments over and over. Just implement one of the solutions and see if the beta testers like it. The worst thing you could do is waste time over tiny issues, while big issues need to be fixed.
A software will never be perfect, because the viewpoints of users differ. Some users will think that a minor problem breaks the whole application. Others will live with even severe usability issues. People tend to lend their ear to those who argue the loudest. Get to know your users to separate the "loud" issues from the important ones. It takes experience to do this, and sometimes you will make wrong decisions, but there is no perfect way, only one of steady improvement.
If you can, set aside a certain amount of usability development resources for the rollout phase of your software. Usability issues will arise when people start working with it in a real production environment. Sometimes it is not important to present the perfect software, but to solve issues quickly as they arise.
The flippant (yet somewhat accurate) answer to how to think like a user is put a knitting needle in your ear and push really hard.
The longer response is that we as programmers are not normal and I mean that in a good way. I scratch my head at the number of people who still run executables they receive from strangers in emails and then wonder how their computer got infected.
Any group of people will in time develop their own jargon, conventions, practices and expectations. As a programmer you will expect different things from an operating system than Joe User will. This is natural, to be expected yet hard to work around.
It's also why BAs (business analysts) exist. They typically come from a business or testing background and don't think like programmers. They are your link to the users.
Really though, you should be talking to your users. There's no poitn debating what users do. Just drag a few in and see what they do.
A usability test group will help.. tests not focused on discovering bugs, but on the learning curve of the new design, made by a group of users, not programmers.
I treat all users like malicious idiots.
Malicious because I assume all users are going to try and break my code, do stuff that is not allowed, avoid typing in valid data, and will do anything in their power to make my life hell.
Idiots because again I can't assume they will understand simple stuff like phone formats, will run away screaming if presented to many choices, and will not make any leap of faith on complicated instructions. The goal is to hold their hand the entire way.
At the same time, its important to make sure the user doesn't realize you think they're an idiot.
To think like a user, be one. But are these actually bugs that your testers are reporting? Or are they "enhancement requests"? If the software behaves as designed per requirements and they just don't like the way it operates, that's not a bug. That's a failure of requirements and design. Make it work, make it rock solid, make it easy to change and you'll be able to make it what your users want.
I see some good suggestions here, especially observing people trying to use you app. One thing I would suggest is to look at the order in which things are presented to the user on paper forms (if they use these to do data entry from) and make the final data entry page mimic that order as closely as possible. So many data entry errors (and loss of data entry speed) are from them having to jump around on the page and losing their place. I did some work for a political campaign this year and in every case, entering data was made much more difficult because the computer screen did things in a differnt order than the paper inputs. This is particularly important if the form is one that can't be changed (like a voter registration form, a campaign has to use what the state provides) to match the computer screen. ALso be consistent from screen to screen if possible. If it is first Name last name on one form, making it last name first name on the next will confuse people and guanteee data entry errors.
If you are truly interested in understanding users though I strongly suggest taking a course in Human factors engineering. It is an enlightening experience.
The 'right' way to do this is to prototype (or mock up) your new interface features, and watch your users try to use them. Nothing is as enlightening as seeing a real user try to use a new feature.
Unfortunately, given most projects time and resources, this is not possible. If that is the position you are in I would recommend you discuss in the team who has the best grasp of usability, and then make them responsible for usability decisions - but that person will need to regularly consult real users to make sure his/her ideas are consistent with what the users want.
I'd suggest doing some form of usability testing; I've participated in such in the past, and found them quite useful.
If you were writing a ticketing system, for example, bring up tasks, and ask questions like "how would you update this ticket" or "what do you expect to happen if this button is clicked".
You don't necessarily need a full application, either, in some places screen shots can be used.
You could take the TDD/BDD approach and get the users involved before beta, having them work with you on refining requirements as you write your unit tests. We're beginning to incorporate some of those trends into our current project, and we're seeing fewer bugs in the areas where we have involved the users earlier.
There is no "think like a user" technique, get your hands on someone who knows nothing of the project and throw what you have done at them.
It's the only way to see how the look + feel + functionality present themselves to the end user.
Once you shocked that person who knew nothing of the product, listen to all of their idiotic (or so you think they are) complaints, fix them, arrange every silly cosmetic thing they point out (either by fixing the UI or by improving whichever documentation you had)..
and after you have satisfied the person you chose to look at your app from zero knowledge on the subject first round, pick another ...and another... until they stop being shocked when they see it, and they don't get stuck on.. "ok.. what does this do?" kind of phases.
You (as a member of the project, be it the project manager, developer, etc) will never think like a user is my answer to that question.
Old saying: You can make something "fool proof" but you can't make it "Damn-fool proof".
Additionally: When you make something "idiot proof" the world invents a better idiot.
Other than that, I agree with what everyone else said.
Ask someone with absolutely no knowledge, insight or programming experience to use the program and try to figure out every function of the program.
People who would NEVER use such a program are most likely to find bugs.
See it as a new Safari user (or FF) who tries to put the URL inside the search field...
As a programmer you guess no-one would be that stupid (or, well.. unknowing), but people actually sometimes find themselves in these situations. As a programmer, we miss these things.

Most effective form of CAPTCHA?

Of all the forms of CAPTCHA available, which one is the "least crackable" while remaining fairly human readable?
I believe that CAPTCHA is dying. If someone really wants to break it, it will be broken. I read (somewhere, don't remember where) about a site that gave you free porn in exchange for answering CAPTCHAs to they can be rendered obsolete by bots. So, why bother?
Anyone who really wants to break this padlock can use a pair of bolt cutters, so why bother with the lock?
Anyone who really wants to steal this car can drive up with a tow truck, so why bother locking my car?
Anyone who really wants to open this safe can cut it open with an oxyacetylene torch, so why bother putting things in the safe?
Because using the padlock, locking your car, putting valuables in a safe, and using a CAPTCHA weeds out a large spectrum of relatively unsophisticated or unmotivated attackers. The fact that it doesn't stop sophisticated, highly motivated attackers doesn't mean that it doesn't work at all. Using a CAPTCHA isn't going to stop all spammers, but it's going to tremendously reduce the amount that requires filtering or manual intervention.
Heck look at the lame CAPTCHA that Jeff uses on his blog. Even a wimpy barrier like that still provides a lot of protection.
I agree with Thomas. Captcha is on its way out. But if you must use it, reCAPTCHA is a pretty good provider with a simple API.
I believe that CAPTCHA is dying. If someone really wants to break it, it will be broken. I read (somewhere, don't remember where) about a site that gave you free porn in exchange for answering CAPTCHAs to they can be rendered obsolete by bots. So, why bother?
If you're a small enough site, no one would bother.
If you're still looking for a CAPTCHA, I like tEABAG_3D by the OCR Research Team. It's complicated to break and uses your 3D vision. Plus, it being developed by people who break CAPTCHAs for fun.
If you're just looking for a captcha to prevent spammers from bombing your blog, the best option is something simple but unique. For example, ask to write the word "Cat" into a box. The advantage of this is that no targeted captcha-breaker was developed for this solution, and your small blog isn't important enough for someone to actually develop one. I've used such a captcha on my blog with some success for a couple of years now.
This information is hard to really know because I believe a CAPTCHA gets broken long before anybody knows about it. There is economic incentive for those that break them to keep it quiet.
I used to work with a guy whose job revolved mostly around breaking CAPTCHA's and I can tell you the one giving them fits currently is reCAPTCHA.
Now, does that mean it will forever, call me skeptical.
I wonder if a CAPTCHA mechanism that uses collage made of pictures and asks human to type what he sees in the collage image will be much more crack-proof than the text and number image one. Imagine that the mechanism stitches pictures of cat, cup and car into a collage image and expects human visitor to tick (checkboxes) cat, cup, and car. How long do you think will hackers and crackers will come up with an algorithm to crack the mechanism (i.e. extract image elements from the collage and recognize the object depicted by each picture) ...
If you wanted you could try out the Microsoft Research project Asirra: http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/
CAPTCHAS, I believe should start being considered heavily when designing the UX. They're slow, cumbersome, and a very poor user experience. They are useful, don't get me wrong but perhaps you should look into designing a honeypot.
A honeypot is created by adding a hiddenfield at the bottom of the form. Because spam bots will fill in all the fields on the page blindly you can do a check:
If honeypotfield <> Empty Then
"No Spam TY"
Else
//Proceed with the form
End If
This works until there is a specifically designed spambot for your site, so they can choose to fill out selected input fields.
For more information: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/09/11/honeypot-captcha.aspx/
As far as I know, the Google's one is the best that there is. It hasn't been broken by computer programs yet. What I know that the crackers have been doing is to copy the image and then send it to many phishing websites where humans solve them to enter those websites.
It doesn't matter if captchas are broken or not now -- there are Indian firms that do nothing but process captchas. I'm with the rest of the group in saying that Captchas are on their way out.
Here is a cool link to create CAPTCHA..... http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/CaptchaImage.asp
Just.. don't.. There are several reasons use of captcha is not advised.
http://www.interfacegeek.com/dont-ever-use-captchas/
I use uniqpin.com - it's easy to use and not annoying for users. So, bots can recognise a text, but can't recognize a image.
Death by Captcha can solve any Regular CAPTCHA (incude reCAPTCHA), but not Speedcoin Cryptocurrency Captcha.
Death by Captcha - http://deathbycaptcha.com
Speedcoin Captcha - http://speedcoin.co/info/captcha/Speedcoin_Captcha.html