Is CAPTCHA Useful?

"CAPTCHA", which is trademarked the Carnegie Mellon University, is a short form for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It is a test, which helps the computer to differentiate between machines and human beings. It has the capability of creating and grading tests that automatically accepts all humans and rejects all machines.

It works on the assumption that humans can read distorted machines but machines usually cannot do so. You can know more about CAPTCHA and smart CAPTCHA at http://www.protectwebform.com/ and http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.

Most website owners find CAPTCHA very useful. Such tests help to prevent programs known as bots. Bots are programs that pretend to be humans and abuse the services of the internet. Bots try to sell or make you sign up for thousands of free mail services. The bots spam your inbox daily. They intrude into common chat rooms to accumulate personal information and publishing links to various sites for promotional benefits.

The bots create worms that can cause immense harm to your machine. They crack your passwords, assault privacy and use your personal information for commercial use without your permission.

CAPTCHAS and CAPTCHA plug-ins (http://www.protectwebform.com/plugin_wordpress) intend to prevent these bots from creating havoc. The CAPTCHA programs need the user to recognise and then key in a string of distorted letters and numbers in a box. The string will appear as a distorted image over a ‘noisy’ background. CAPTCHAs are used by various large and small sites. You will find them in mail services, banking sites, blogs, chat rooms and similar places.

Spam seems to unfortunately be way of life. Day in and day out spammers are sending message after message into your e-mail system. But it's not just in e-mail that you may be hit with spam. Spam also is a problem in online newsgroups, logs, search engines and even instant messaging!

The reason why advertisers resort to spamming is because it does not cost much. They have to bear only the cost of managing the list of individuals that are targeted to receive the mails. Moreover, you cannot hold the sender accountable for the mass mailers they send. Spamming has become really ubiquitous since there are no entry barriers. No wonder your inbox is always flooded with mass mailers.

Usenet spam is a message that can be sent to twenty or more Usenet newsgroups. This kind of spam floods the newsgroups with unnecessary advertisement and posts. It also challenges your ability to accept and manage the topics on the system.

The other kind of spam, which is the email spam usually targets individuals with direct messages. The list of ids that are targeted to spam can be created by scanning postings from Usenet or pilfering with the Internet mailing list. This kind of spamming does incur a little more money.

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