Most people have a love-hate relationship with the CAPTCHA. We love them because they keep people from spamming our sites (for the most part), but sometimes the make our eyes hurt and frustrate us as we try to figure out what exactly the garbled words say. Sometimes, you can’t even make them out and have try, time and again, to prove that you are human.
Today it might seem hard to remember what life was like before CAPTCHAs started being used by AltaVista and Yahoo in 2000. Back then, CAPTCHAs were designed to prevent automated chat bots and URL submissions. Despite their popularity today not many people know that CAPTCHA isn’t just a something that sounds cool (and kind of like “gotcha”). It’s actually is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turning test to tell Computer and Humans Apart”.
Here is something even more interesting than acronyms (yes, such a thing exists). With the billions of CAPTCHAs being jumbled around the web, you’re more than likely to come across one that’s either inappropriate, laugh-out-loud hilarious, or just down right confusing. We’ve compiled a list of the craziest ones we could find. Read on, and be thankful that your email wasn’t stuck behind one of these.
Facebook is always trying to assure us that it’s tough about it’s security, but maybe it’s being a little too tough with this CAPTCHA. (via Sophos)
The other day I was trying to post something for sale on Craigslist but could not get past the CAPTCHA on the final page. I just couldn’t unscramble it for the life of me. I had to click the refresh button three times before I stopped in my tracks to see a CAPTCHA in Hebrew. I suppose, not matching the alphabet of the site you are using is one way to thwart bots.
We move from religious profiling to the White House with the next CAPTCHA. The official White House website unfortunately pictured the above CAPTCHA which one Cisco engineer found while trying to send President Obama a message. A CAPTCHA creator explained that they do “heavy filtering to prevent offensive combinations,” but sometimes “things slip through.” This caption goes right from confusion to treason.
One BoingBoing reader’s patience was put to the test when he tried to post using the site’s DISQUS commenting system (the same one we use on Geek.com). The result was a slew of incredibly indecipherable CAPTCHAs. How many normal keyboards out there have a lambda key?
Beastie Boys fans may be wondering why exactly this CAPTCHA didn’t work. The computer is telling the user that it’s incorrect, but clearly, there is no better answer than the one provided. Perhaps Mix Master Mike can figure it out what went wrong?
Something is seriously wrong with the White House’s CAPTCHA system. Not only was there the troublesome “Baracks” message above, but this one is also quite inappropriate. I suppose that if you make enough two word phrases you are eventually going to get some less-than-ideal ones, but this is just plain gross. Keep this up and some people might start writing to the President by hand, as the site suggests, rather than type the messages in. (via Huff Post)
Sometimes, we get a CAPTCHA that’s not wrong in the way that we can’t decipher it, but is instead insanely and unquestionable morally corrupt. Yes, one surprised Facebook user was greeted with this illegal and unfortunate CAPTCHA. Of course the case can be made questioning whether it’s talking about grandchildren who hump or vice versa but, regardless, this is not something we need to see while trying to post a status update. (via CAPTCHAFail Tumblr)
Tee hee! This CAPTCHA from Google makes us giggle like we are 10 years old again. Though cleaner than the last one, it’s still one of those CAPTCHAs that make us stop and think “huh?” Where the heck are these messages being pulled from? (via FunLobby)
Some CAPTCHAs really want to make sure you’re human and not a spambot, but this one may be taking things a little too far. True, most spambots won’t be able to do the equation, but anyone who isn’t a math whiz will be left scratching their head after seeing this one. Amusingly enough this was the challenge placed in front of the Quantum Random Bit Generator Service sign-up page, so maybe they really are trying to keep non-math geeks out.
This one takes CAPTCHA to a whole different level entirely, yet still manages to be insanely frustrating. Having tried it ourselves, it seems that Guy Abbott, the man behind the website Geee.net in which this CAPTCHA resides on his “contact” page, doesn’t actually want to be contacted at all.
If you have any of your own strange CAPTCHAs, please share them with us below!
0 comments:
Post a Comment