Captcha is becoming unreadable

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  • worried
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2008
    • 684
    • 4.2.X

    Captcha is becoming unreadable

    I think bots have an easier time reading captcha than humans. I was locked out of my phpbb forum because it took me forever to get the captcha correct. Also, have you ever listened to the audio for reCAPTCHA? It's practically nothing but noise. reCAPTCHA's tagline is "Telling humans and computers apart." Yeah, only the bot will get it right. :P
  • beishe8
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2005
    • 6782
    • 4.2.X

    #2
    Originally posted by worried
    I think bots have an easier time reading captcha than humans. I was locked out of my phpbb forum because it took me forever to get the captcha correct.
    Get rid of it.
    Question / Answer
    This technique was introduced during the phpBB2 days and is much easier to
    manage with phpBB3 since a board owner can set up custom registration fields.
    The basic premise is this: the board owner sets up a question on the
    registration page that requires an answer. The answer could be provided in the
    form of a drop-down list or other input control, or alternatively it could be an
    open text field that requires the user to enter the answer manually. The
    question can be related to the primary subject matter for the board or it could
    be a general knowledge question like what is 2 + 2 or what color is the sky. In
    any case, the question is supposed to be easily answered by a human and
    impossible to answer for a bot.


    vB5 is unequivocally the best forum software, but not yet...

    Comment

    • worried
      Senior Member
      • Dec 2008
      • 684
      • 4.2.X

      #3
      Thanks. I'll look into it. I'm really not as familiar with their documentation.

      Comment

      • beishe8
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2005
        • 6782
        • 4.2.X

        #4
        You're welcome.


        vB5 is unequivocally the best forum software, but not yet...

        Comment

        • Gladius
          Senior Member
          • Dec 2002
          • 927
          • 3.8.x

          #5
          Most boards that I manage, the spammers crack any new QA we come up in a matter of days. They've got cheap slave labour that costs nothing, so getting a human to find the answers to the questions is still dirt cheap. And you can only come up with so many questions and answers before falling into easily crackable patterns. So QA is pretty useless and Recaptcha's been broken a long time ago (we still got way less spammers signing up with QA than Recaptcha).
          Former endorsement revoked. You know the saying - one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel...

          Comment

          • cpvrx
            New Member
            • Feb 2011
            • 24
            • 4.1.x

            #6
            Originally posted by worried
            I think bots have an easier time reading captcha than humans. I was locked out of my phpbb forum because it took me forever to get the captcha correct. Also, have you ever listened to the audio for reCAPTCHA? It's practically nothing but noise. reCAPTCHA's tagline is "Telling humans and computers apart." Yeah, only the bot will get it right. :P
            Ya, they are getting pretty hard to read. I know if I can't read a captcha, I don't join the community.
            Owner of Virtual pet list
            Do you need to buy art?

            Comment

            • Mayers
              Senior Member
              • Jul 2004
              • 219
              • 3.6.x

              #7
              I'm happy to know I'm not the only one that thought they are hard to read.
              Student Zone - A community for students

              Comment

              • TTG
                Senior Member
                • May 2004
                • 315
                • 3.6.x

                #8
                Been using SolveMedia for about 6 weeks now and spamming no longer a problem.

                Comment

                • thehotweb
                  Member
                  • Nov 2002
                  • 43

                  #9
                  The default CAPTCHA image that comes with VB is really hard to read. But reCAPTCHA has been pretty awesome I thought, no problems so far reading it and if you get a hard one to read you can simply refresh it.
                  leftunderground.com - Progressive Message Board Open To Everyone

                  Comment

                  • Kensino
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2007
                    • 609
                    • 3.8.x

                    #10
                    I can't read the CAPTCHA at most websites. I can't make out most of it, even the one that vBulletin uses. Then I end up trying so many times I get locked out of the website.

                    I thought I was the only one that had trouble reading that junk.

                    Comment

                    • TomJames
                      Senior Member
                      • Feb 2006
                      • 761
                      • 3.8.x

                      #11
                      The problem is that I think it puts people off, I've certainly been about to sign up for sites then find that I can't guess the CAPTCHA / reCAPTCHA so end up giving up.
                      - TomJames

                      Comment

                      • Mark.B
                        vBulletin Support
                        • Feb 2004
                        • 24286
                        • 6.0.X

                        #12
                        They are extremely difficult to read, especially RECAPTCHA which doesn't always even use real, or even pronounceable, words!

                        I dropped the whole caboodle a long time ago and switched to question/answer. Had no real spammer problems since then and the questions are ones that any English speaker would know. Non-English speakers shouldn't be signing up to my site anyway since the only language we use is English.
                        MARK.B
                        vBulletin Support
                        ------------
                        My Unofficial vBulletin 6.0.0 Demo: https://www.talknewsuk.com
                        My Unofficial vBulletin Cloud Demo: https://www.adminammo.com

                        Comment

                        • Shamil.
                          Senior Member
                          • Feb 2008
                          • 4755
                          • 4.2.X

                          #13
                          Even with contact lenses and glasses on, at the same time, I just cannot read some of them.
                          Shamil Nunhuck, - Radon Systems Ltd.
                          VPS + Dedicated Server Hosting and Management
                          vBulletin Hosting and Services
                          Server / Website Consultation

                          Comment

                          • janaf
                            Senior Member
                            • Dec 2009
                            • 245
                            • 4.0.0

                            #14
                            Around the end of 2010 reCapcta was broken by hackers in a systematc way, and there seems to have been lots of exploit code around. Search the web for "recaptcha broken". I stopped using recaptcha then and spamming went from hundreds per day to zero. If the recaptcha texts are getting harder to read now, it may be a countermeasure from Google (who own/run reCaptcha). However, there are alternatives. Q and A seems to work better for most, at least for smaller sites, where less worth the effort for spmmers to sign up manually.

                            Comment

                            • Andy
                              Senior Member
                              • Jan 2002
                              • 5886
                              • 4.1.x

                              #15
                              Captcha is almost impossible to read and extremely frustrating. The worse part it doesn't work. Here are the steps I use to prevent spammers.

                              Comment

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