Internet security is getting to be more trouble than it’s worth.

I use Maxthon’s Magic Fill to automate my passage into realms of sites so prosaic you have a hard time imagining why they need to check the identity of everyone asking to enter. But that’s fine.  Takes no real effort on my part.

 But for several months now many of these same sites have stated demanding to know if I’m human. That’s not as pointless at it seems at first. They are tryling to filter out spambots that troll sites to net mass quantities of email addresses on which they can unleash their pleas to help an Aftican prince bring millions into the U.S., the secret of getting my car to run on water and excited offers for colon cleansers.

To thwart probing programs, the sites display captchas, such as the one below, that has some letters that are distorted or masked, letters that no bot should be able to recognize. But if you’re human, the captcha is easy to see through.  Well, almost easy.  You know, it used to be easy, but it’s getting harder and harder to decipher captchas because tougher captchas inspired by the guerilla action from the site Captcha Killer.

 

At Captcha Killer you can upload a captcha, and in a few moments, the site returns the deciphtered read-out of the letters. This may seem like an elaborate way to  go about it, but for anyone who’s blind, it’s a blessing.  When it works.  At the Captcha site you’ll also find comments  from people who can’t get Captcha to do aything at all, and high praise from those for whom it  does work. It has all the appearances of a battle back and forth as the sites using Captcha develop more difficult ones for the killer to decipher, which the killer after a while overcomea routinelyand creative. Rapidshare, for example, uses a captcha, like the one here, that requires you say how many of the letters have cats behind them.  Only rarely, I’ve heard, does anyone get it right on the first try.

Another site, ThePCSpy.com, has come up with CatAuth. The site’s Oli figures computers would have a hard time distingishiung among different furry animals, but humans wouldn’t. The result is a system that has nine phones of animals, some of which are cats. Tell the site how many cats you see, and you’re in!
It’s the cat’s meow.

–MaxthonGuy
Don’t just surf the Web. Seize it!