Bots have been around for awhile and have be an ever increasing concern. How do you know if an account was created by/for a bot or by a genuine user? There different ways to confirm somones humanity, but a great solution is to use CAPTCHA. It asks the user to look at the image and input the letters presented. A human should have little to no trouble copying the letters, however a bot will more often then not be completely dumbfounded. CAPTCHA’s distort the text of the image making it even harder for bots to answer it correctly.
They can only stop technology for so long….
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-stanford-outsmart-captcha-codes.html
Though CAPTCHAs are really nice sometimes I find them a little annoying esspecailly if they are really difficult to figure out. I wish there was a way to do the same thing but make it easier for people to use. And eventually I do believe that someone will be able to figure out how to crack this and by that time I believe that someone should have been working on an alternative to this so that we can implement something else.
I agree, sometimes they are so jumbled that I cant make out what they want me to type….I remember a time when these things werent even in use. I agree that they are needed at times but it seems like more steps the consumer has to take because of these “security issues”