New CAPTCHA

[DavidMJ]

As have been said by other team members, the CAPTCHA is still very much in development. We are constantly trying to create more powerful and more user friendly ways for our users to create communities safe from automated spam.

[Lieutenant Clone]

Id like to see more work put into the 3D CAPTCHA, Ive seen some good ones that are (apparantly) very difficult to crack, because it takes real intelligence to turn a 2D image into 3D.

There is one called tEABAG_3D that looks promising (its a whole series accually)
http://www.ocr-research.org.ua/_teabag101.php (autogenerated, refresh page)
- very easily readable for being 3D (I can read them all easily and fast)
edit: hard to read if it has too little or too much rotation... happens every few refreshes.


- bit harder to read, looks a bit nicer, dont know if it would be harder to crack


- very interesting Idea. This is generated on-the-fly. Im thinking the tEABAG team might be on to something with this one
- exreamely easy to read

[DavidMJ]

That first image is darn right scary to read. The block nature of the second brings up interesting questions ("Is that a five or an S?") but the multiple faces technique can be seen in the entropy policy.

[Highway of Life]

Hey MJ,

Does a computer have an easy time reading text in an image with polar cordinates?
Example: -- (would color make it more difficult as well?)

[Lieutenant Clone]

That first image is darn right scary to read. The block nature of the second brings up interesting questions ("Is that a five or an S?") but the multiple faces technique can be seen in the entropy policy.

Take a look at the very first one (link not an image). It looks to be the best.
With the last one, it is very easy to read, and from what I can guess, very hard to crack so long as the rotations are always different. The issue with the s or 5 could be solve either by not using numbers (and stating so) or filling the numbers with a different color.

[MKruer]

Am I the only one here who thinks that if a user is so dumb that they can not figure out the CAPTCHA is a few attempts that perhaps you don’t want them posting to your board?

This may even prevent the one post legit posters.

I still like my idea of combining a small logic puzzle with the letters.

[Xore]

Am I the only one here who thinks that if a user is so dumb that they can not figure out the CAPTCHA is a few attempts that perhaps you don’t want them posting to your board?

This may even prevent the one post legit posters.

I still like my idea of combining a small logic puzzle with the letters.

You are my hero

Edit:
(needs a small descriptor text: "Enter the letters on the right in the order they are shown on the left" or something similar)

(plus needs a little more work wrt the graphics, etc)

[Highway of Life]

Well...

The problem is, CAPTCHA is not an accurate judge of who is intellegent and who is dumb.
Especially if you have a board that is a how-to, you have to deal with people who don't know anything about the internet, and sometimes computers, and a radical CAPTCHA is just going to freak them out and scare them away.
A person who has no experience with computers or the internet does not mean they are dumb, and you don't want to turn them away because of difficult login complications.

Now, if you have a board where you really only want users who can read the captcha easily, turn on the more difficult option, and turn the noise up to High. That should scare away the newbie computer user, and you won't have to worry about them posting.

What it comes down to is, how worried are you about letting a SUPER-ADVANCED-BOT register on your forums? And is that more important then letting newbie users sign up on your board.
We have to strike a balance somewhere.

Plus you have a lot of users who don't want to have to hurdle an elephant to sign up for a forum

[DavidMJ]

People who can read in high noise are not better with computers, they just have better eyes. "Newbie" users have eyes, they should be able to read a readable CAPTCHA just fine. There is a CERTAIN level of expectation regarding intelligence (reading) which we simply cannot help or compensate for. If such users exist and they want to register on your board, by all means disable it.

[ElbertF]

I tried adding a little bit of a hint to Occlude. What do people think?



Edit: basically, a little zigzag to indicate the order in which the letters are supposed to appear.

I could also change the code to allow the letters to read left-to-right, top, followed by left-to-right, bottom, and then have the code draw the appropriate zigzag depending on which method it chooses (current, or top-then-bottom)

I immediatly knew what the zigzag was for, but I have no problems with the placement of the letters anyway.

I like Entropy the best, but I think it should be spread out just a tad so the letters don't run together. etc...

You're missing the whole point. I'd rather have new members to fail the CAPTCHA 1 or 2 times before succeeding then being flooded with automated spam. If you've read the "16" pages, you'd know computer can read almost anything.

There is one called tEABAG_3D that looks promising (its a whole series accually)
http://www.ocr-research.org.ua/_teabag101.php

That looks really great! The colored one is to hard to read, but it looks smoother then the one used here on Area51 (the "edgy" letters are pretty hard to read).

This one is awsome! It takes some time to decifer though, which would be pretty annoying if you have to do it for every (guest) post. I'd definatly use this for registering.