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CAPTCHA image
From Encyclopedia Dramatica
Pioneering bloggers and web 2.0 startups recognize that their sites are precious little snowflakes, and must never be used for evil. As such, they invented the CAPTCHA (acronym for ), some verification code bullshit to stop computers from using their sites without human assistance. The unintended result has been a complete cessation of blog posting and web 2.0 account signups as visitors realized that not a one gave enough of a fuck about "Articulate Babble" or ob.noxio.us to transcribe some kindergartener's scrawl.
Contents |
[edit] Types of CAPTCHAs
[edit] ReCAPTCHA (and how to fuck it up)
reCAPTCHA is a system that combines a human-unreadable CAPTCHA with a machine-unreadable word scanned from a book. When a website forces someone to get past a human-unreadable CAPTCHA, it holds a special place of hatred in the heart of each of its victims, but reCAPTCHA hopes to lessen this by turning CAPTCHA entering into a form of slave labour to digitize books. The CAPTCHA has to be entered correctly and whatever you type for the book scan, even if you type "nigger", they'll take your word for it and put it on an ebook somewhere.
You know it's a ReCAPTCHA and not some other system because you have a little box that visibly says reCAPTCHA, you have a circle button that allows you to refresh the CAPTCHA, and it always has two words instead of one. So you wonder how do you now which one is the CAPTCHA and which isn't? The CAPTCHA always has lines through it and is hard to read while the book scan never has lines and is easy to read. So then you get one, just hit the refresh circle until due to a software glitch, they accidentally make one that is human-readable for one word and for the other it has no line through it so it's a book scan.
Now enter the text with lines through it correctly as that's the CAPTCHA and then enter a completely incorrect word for the text with no lines. It doesn't have to be the same number of letters. It can be the word "On" and you just enter "fuck" or "nigger" and it'll take it and put in a book somewhere! Congratulations! You've gotten past the CAPTCHA and then just fucked up someone's scan of a book!
[edit] Math CAPTCHA
[edit] Ordinary CAPTCHAs
 Your common MySpace CAPTCHA. |
 A friendly, welcoming CAPTCHA. |
 A typical Free Republic CAPTCHA. |
 Seen during Google signup. |
 Captcha-tan. |
[edit] Wikis
Wikipedia and other similar sites don't use CAPTCHA systems, and are prone to vandalism as a result, since it takes only seconds to register. The folks running Wikia do, however, leading to decreased spam and vandalism, and proving once again that Angela is smarter than Jimbo. Of course any wikia wiki that isn't watched closely may still be targeted.
[edit] On MySpace
The use of CAPTCHA codes are fairly common. They are required to be typed when someone is:
- Changing their password
- Registering a new account
- Sending comments
- Friend requests
- Modifying profiles (every fucking time)
- Sending someone a message
