Larry Magid Tech Report: Is Google Putting The CAPTCHA To Pasture?
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— Google is introducing a new technology that will do away with those tricky CAPTCHA forms that make you type in codes that are barely legible to prove you're an actual human being.
The idea behind CAPTCHA technology was that it was supposed to be made so that a human could read it, but that it would be impossible for a machine to read. The problem was some machines could read the code while many humans couldn't.
The technology even gives an option, likely for the visually impaired (although I've used it myself), where you can listen to the code, but sometimes that's just as bad and sounds as distorted as code does visually.
It's really a broken system and Google has come up with what they're calling an alternative. To back up CAPTCHA technology comes in handy for identifying humans, which helps reduce the levels of spam email you get. Whether it's a website or a blog, machines can come in and set up an account and send spam or even worse, commit fraud.
The new system is so simple; you simply click a box that says 'I am not a robot'. You might ask, 'Couldn't a machine click the box?' The answer is all about Google's secret algorithm that looks at hand movement and other variables to tell with fairly certain accuracy if the user is human or not.