Google’s reCaptcha software has allowed for reducing the amount of bots taking part in communications on the internet, whether that be making accounts or commenting on articles. ReCaptcha, however, requires one to type, with some of the characters being difficult to read. Recently, many competitors have arisen to fight the prevalence of reCaptcha, with each having a different set of benefits and problems.
What does reCaptcha do that prevents bots, and does it have any other benefits for users? ReCaptcha uses scrambled words to make it more difficult to read the given letters, an improvement over other systems which simply write their words in the same font. This action prevents bots from reading the letters, as they cannot be scanned by a computer and “pasted” as a response, but leaves the text clear enough to allow for humans to pass through the system. This program benefits society by working to digitize old newspapers and books, helping to make them searchable and easier to read. Though many of the words can be read by computers and placed into computerized copies of books, some words are not decodable and are sent to reCaptcha to be decoded by humans. These words are then placed in reCaptchas, with people helping to digitize books every time they login or make an account. The way that reCaptchas verify that the user typed in a correct response, however, is by using one of the words as a control, which the system already knows the answer to (usually the harder to read word) and using a word from a book being digitized for the other, learning from the answer written down. This system can sometimes be hard to read, and may benefit society in the future. Right now, however, it does not offer any benefits for the website owner, something that other captchas seek to take advantage of.
A new captcha company which is looking to become the most used captcha is named minteye. This company advertises the fact that it is much easier to solve by humans, but also allows for site owners to receive advertising revenue due to the captcha’s unique solving technique. Minteye captchas are solved by dragging a slider (or using the arrow keys) to fix a warped image so that the image returns to normal, with this action being all that is required to solve the captcha. The image can be a paid advertisement, ensuring that the users of the website see the ad and that their minds register the ad when trying to solve the captcha, promising advertisers a method of increasing the value of each view, while also making it easy for owners to increase their advertising revenue without adding too many intrusive advertisements to their websites. Minteye promises that their captchas are more secure, and will prevent any bots that have adapted to reCaptchas from entering systems secured by minteye.
These two captcha systems are different, but as a user, what is the most important part of your experience? Using the reCaptcha system, one has to do slightly more work, but the end effect is better for society, as books and news articles are digitized. Using the minteye system, however, the task is much easier to solve, but the benefits are only sent to the website owner, who may use them to increase the quality of servers, but also may pocket the money, creating a situation where there is no benefit to using this system. Both captcha systems are beneficial for one group of society, but their actual security and usefulness will determine which survives and which fails.