Use Some Ingenuity and Avoid Captcha
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Perhaps one of the worst user experiences I continue to run into on the web is Captcha technology.
Captcha is when a an image is generated with numbers, letters, and sometimes words tha you need to retype into another field. This is to thwart automated form posts from comment spammers. Since they can’t decipher the code, they can’t submit the bogus posts.
Captcha Flaws
- It’s an interruptive technology. I can’t tell you how many times I go to submit a comment or send a message on some site and I’m interrupted by a Captcha field. It stops the flow and stops the user experience. I can’t stand it. On occasion, I simply give up and stop visiting the site or using the tool.
- It’s generated by a computer. The fact that it’s generated by a computer tells me that someday it will be broken by a computer. It’s only a matter of time.
- It’s lazy. Instead of fixing the problem, it makes the user have to work around it.
A Better Approach
A couple folks have asked me why I didn’t utilize Captcha when I wrote my Comment Form plugin. I didn’t use it because I wanted to make the experience better, not worse, while avoiding comment spammers. With just a teeny bit of ingenuity, software companies could make these challenges fun, not an interruption.
My challenge question on my contact page is pretty simple, “last word in my blog’s title”. But it makes the person look up for a second and perhaps even chuckle, that they have to enter “blog”. Nice and easy. No discolored, distended, wacky combinations of letters and numbers. Just a simple question that can’t be answered by a computer - only the reader.
Facebook now using Captcha
The latest company to fall victim to Captcha style technology is Facebook. Not only is it an absolute eyesore, you can barely read the dang thing. Facebook has been pretty stellar in developing some cool tools and integrations into their site… did they really have to use this stupid technology? Bad enough that typepad and others are sold on it.
Some might argue that “it works”. It only works in the respect that it removes the problem from the website and places it on the user. This is inexcusable design and there are better ways! C’mon Facebook… take a chance, invent something! Be creative.
If HumanAuth or something “standard” that computers can’t do would catch on and go into widespread use, it would somewhat alleviate the interruption you’re talking about.
BUT, you still have to be careful on the implementation. HumanAuth’s sample that I just went and looked at again has a flaw! The moment you click the right 3 images, it changes a button to let you know you’ve got it right. That’s ok, but it gives you unlimited clicks, so a simple recursive algorithm could easily figure out the 3 images.
Your idea is simpler and simple usually means there’s less that can go wrong.
I wasn’t aware of HumanAuth and KittenAuth… I’m going to look into these technologies!
But what does one not do for just a little bit of attention…
Anyway, our site (http://ajaxwidgets.com) does not have a captcha for our blog system. And fact is that 99.99% of all spam blogs are being denied by the simple fact that we don’t allow HTML…!
In addition we’re using “link condoms” for the URL field which also takes away a lot of spam. Not really all that hard
.t
Your example of how you’re dealing with it is exactly my point, there are definitely less intrusive ways of dealing with the problem.
Thanks, Thomas! And I love widgets, so I’ll be checking out your site!
Doug
A captcha can be many things, text based, question and answer, subjective (pick cutest puppy) and these are much quicker to use and make more sense that trying to figure out if that is an o or a 0.
I agree with you, and I hate them also, but your post didnt even cover the full breadth of the topic, and didnt offer any ideas about how to fix it.
I agree - I didn’t come up with the best solution… that’s what my call is to the companies with great resources and user experience experts. My motivation for writing the post was after seeing Facebook use this technology.
I also didn’t realize that Captcha technologies overlapped outside of the simple font graphic that a user has to submit. If Captcha technology is expanding their footprint into challenge questions and answers that can be made to enhance, not degrade, the user experience, I’m all for them!
Thanks!
Then reset the number every time someone visits the page.
That will ensure it’s a human person going to the page: for a little while.
Chris
However, it is really really easy to write an invisible CAPTCHA that does the trick. There are many different ways of doing it.
There you go, we could start rating Captcha’s on their “HAF” (Human Annoyance Factor), Spammer Annoyance Factor, etc.
I hate captchas as well. If I really had to write a captcha I would do it like http://www.hotcaptcha.com/ since picking out the pretty people or the furry animals or the whatevers out of a series of images is trivial for humans and extremely difficult for automated scripts.
I don’t use SpamKarma but I have heard of it. I do utilize Bad Behavior and I’m probably only having to deal with 10% of the comment spam I had before.
I’ll check out Hot Captcha - sounds similar to what I’d like to see.
Thanks!
Doug
This post was just ridiculous enough to get some attention and drive up your ad revenue. You’re going to have to try harder to “tip” this blog. I’d start with content worth reading.
Sounds as though you didn’t actually read my post. I never said my solution would scale nor should it be used by these companies. I did say that I’d like to see some companies (like Facebook) come up with a more ingenious solution. My plugin does allow you to change the challenge question and answer whenever you’d like - no bot is going to keep up with that. To date, I’ve had no SPAM on my contact page from this solution.
One example: Perhaps Facebook could actually profit from using an advertisement on the page and asking “Who’s ad is on this page?”. Anything is better than punching in a bunch of numbers and letters - if you can actually read them.
Cheers! Be sure to subscribe! hehe
Doug
Some of them would even force you to watch a 20 second ad video and then answer a question such as “Which company was this ad for?” While, I’m not a fan of that particular method (I hate to wait), it would be interesting to see what something like that does to ad revenue.
Imagine a CAPTCHA that you find difficult to read and then let someone with poor vision have a go. Difficult? Almost impossible.
How about someone with no vision at all, surfing the web with a screen reader or braille technology. A CAPTCHA is designed such that programs can’t read it. In this case, neither will the disabled user.
There are few accessible CAPTCHAs, ones that include a voice CAPTCHA for those who can’t see are an example, but the added usability concerns make it a technology that I would never consider implementing. Beat the spammers another way, don’t make your real users pay (also the reason I use the dofollow plugin).
However I think the better solution is a basic math question, three variables:
1. Number 1 (0-9)
2. Number 2 (0-9)
3. Solution
It is done so the math is very easy, and you can figure out what the answer is from a script standpoint rather easily.
Of course in the end it’s just a matter of time before AIs break that. But I don’t think there’s a perfect solution than robots will never break, so this is good enough and doesn’t disrupt user experience at all (unless, of course, you consider yourself a spammer…)
Besides, if this is a topic that gets people’s attention, why the heck would you _not_ want to blog about it?
True, its not the usual mangled letters in an artificially grainy image, but it is something trying to tell computer and human apart.
raved about how much I appreciate the dual nature of the reCaptcha system, in that it blocks spam (though not 100% effectively, as you point out) while helping to decipher books, and I’m still a fan.
No disputing their detrimental effect on user experience, but you have to admit that using minimal effort from each member of a vast pool of humans to do what even a very brainy computer cannot (read mangled text that defies Optical Character Recognition) is a pretty elegant solution.
Though generally speaking, yes, I’m all for using creativity instead of code when possible.