What is a captcha? Why is it used?
CAPTCHA is not a new word to regular internet users. Nowadays, captcha is found on almost all websites. Today we will learn about this captcha and how it works.
What does CAPTCHA mean?
CAPTCHA consists of a combination of several English words, which have the full meaning – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. That is, captcha is the process of automatically verifying the difference between a human and a computer.
Captcha is a system that determines whether a person is involved in a process, or whether the work is being done by a spam robot. The captcha process involves inputting different types of numbers, texts, or information that can only be done by humans. Generally, no computer controlled system can fill captcha.
How does CAPTCHA work?
Captcha was originally invented to block comments posted by spammy software. The most common form of captcha is an image with some distorted letters and numbers. Captchas are also widely used to separate specific thematic sections from an image.
The Internet and computers basically use coding languages. Computers cannot understand human language, because human language is made up of wonderful and complex rules.
History of CAPTCHA
Captcha is used on various websites that verify whether the user is a robot. The term captcha was first used by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. The first captcha was used to verify online polls. In 1999, SlashDot created a survey asking visitors to choose the best programmed graduate school for computer science. Carnegie Mellon and students at MIT University created an automated bot program for repeated voting at their school.
These schools received thousands of votes in the survey, while other institutions received only a few hundred votes. The captcha was implemented to prevent users from taking advantage of the voting system.
Captcha is most commonly used on sites like Yahoo Mail or Gmail, where people can create free accounts. CAPTCHA hinders the process of creating spam email accounts on these sites.
Ticketmaster websites like Ticketmaster also use captcha to prevent ticket brokers from buying more tickets for big events. This allows legitimate customers to buy tickets fairly and prevents bots from ordering thousands of tickets.
Captcha is also used to block spammy messages and comments on message boards or contact forms on webpages and blogs. It does not prevent cyber bullying, but it does prevent bots from posting messages automatically.
What is the effectiveness of CAPTCHA?
Unfortunately, as technology and malicious hackers improve, so do their scams. Although captchas are much more secure, cybercriminals are now incorporating captchas into their fake or fraudulent websites to make their scams more credible.
What is the use of CAPTCHA?
Captcha is widely used to protect websites and users. Captcha is the most effective and most used case –
- Protect email services from fraudsters
- Protect website registration system
- Protect online polling
- Protect from spam mail / junk mail
- Prevent dictionary attacks
- Prevent online comment spamming
- In addition to the fields described above, captcha is used in many other cases.
Do you like captcha? Let us know your comments or thoughts about CAPTCHA in the comments section.
History of CAPTCHA
Captcha is used on various websites that verify whether the user is a robot. The term captcha was first used by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. The first captcha was used to verify online polls. In 1999, SlashDot created a survey asking visitors to choose the best programmed graduate school for computer science. Carnegie Mellon and students at MIT University created an automated bot program for repeated voting at their school.
These schools received thousands of votes in the survey, while other institutions received only a few hundred votes. The captcha was implemented to prevent users from taking advantage of the voting system.
Captcha is most commonly used on sites like Yahoo Mail or Gmail, where people can create free accounts. CAPTCHA hinders the process of creating spam email accounts on these sites.
Ticketmaster websites like Ticketmaster also use captcha to prevent ticket brokers from buying more tickets for big events. This allows legitimate customers to buy tickets fairly and prevents bots from ordering thousands of tickets.
