The incentive to avoid spam on our websites and wherever we
navigate is increasingly acute thanks to technologies such as reCAPTCHAS . And
is that this type of self-generated messages is still quite frequent, much in
spite of Bill Gates, who still has to blush at his erratic statement that spam
would soon be a thing of the past back in 2004.
A long time has pass since then and yet the fight against
malicious artificial intelligence persists .
In this article we will explain what CAPTCHAS and reCAPTCHAS
technology consists of, how they can benefit you and how to implement them on
your website to avoid spam.
What are CAPTCHAS
CAPTCHAS are the computer resources that are used on the web
to combat spam through verification processes that come from the so-called
"Turing test". They are intended to avoid automatically generated
entries, which test the conversion rates of the site and compromise SEO.
The word CAPTCHA is an abbreviation of the acronym derived
from “Completely Automated Public Turing
test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Therefore, the term itself tells us
that, in reality, it is about differentiating people from computers through the
use of automated tests.
Do you remember having entered a website and, when
completing a form or commenting on a blog entry, having to take a test
indicating the letters that a self-generated image shows you? That's what
CAPTCHAS are! This way we make sure that behind the web interactions there are
human people and with good intentions.
In this way, by means of the verification test of the
CAPTCHAS, it is possible to prevent bots from interacting with the webs and
leaving their comments spam , with links coming from unreliable sites and that
pose a considerable hindrance to the user experience .
Who created them, when and why
Luis von Ahn was the 22-year-old who, in 2000, at Carnegie
Mellon University, invented the computer system to control the large amount of
spam that was proliferating then and during the 1990s. In order to challenge
the Turing test, the CAPTCHA emerged, the kind of puzzle that machines cannot
solve. An instrument with which it was necessary to recognize the camouflaged
and visually distorted letters and numbers in an image to demonstrate that the
interaction came from a person and not from a computer program.
What is the Turing test?
In 1950, the British mathematician and computer scientist
Alan Turing proposed the mechanism to test the ability of artificial
intelligence to imitate human reasoning, as if the former could converse with
people without the interlocutors ever perceiving the intervention of the
machine. It was the Turing test , invented to determine if a machine is capable
of thinking as a human would. A complete revolution that continues to captivate
many today.
CAPTCHAS types
1. Textual
The most common type of antispam test is text-based. It is
about displaying words and alphanumeric combinations in a distorted way or with
background noise, so that the reader has to make a little effort to identify
them and write them verbatim in the answer field.
2. Visuals
They are graphic CAPTCHAS based on images that the person
can easily identify with the naked eye. Normally, these tests ask about those
images that have a common motive, with a semantic relationship between them.
Example: "Select all images where an orange appears."
3. Hearing
They are the CAPTCHAS designed for people with visual
disabilities. To interpret them, just press a button and then write the user's
interpretation in the answer field. The message can be, for example, a sequence
of numbers.
4. Playful
Playful captchas are another type of image-based CAPTCHAS
and usually represent a little entertainment for the user, designed to respond
to the current gamification trend. They usually pose puzzles that a young child
could solve.
5. Mathematical calculations
It is one of the most common CAPTCHAS when responding to a
form. These are usually fairly straightforward mathematical calculations, but
presented in such a way that they are difficult for a robot to overcome.
Example: 5-3 =…
6. Word games
Like math problems, word games are also types of CAPTCHAS
that we can easily interpret thanks to logic.
7. Logical questions
These CAPTCHAS are similar to the previous ones, since,
although they pose simple questions, they pose a complete challenge to the response
capacity of artificial intelligence, unable to answer questions that, for
example, are of general culture. Example: "What autonomous community does
this character belong to?" (image: Don Quixote).
8. With hidden fields
These CAPTCHAS are designed to fool bots, which are
programmed to fill out all kinds of form fields, including those that are put
on the web invisibly. If these are complemented, the managers of the web will
know that it was not human work.
9. From social networks
When the possibility of completing a registration is raised
by entering a Facebook, Gmail or other social platform, we will also be
avoiding the entry of bots. Therefore, this strategy is conceived in itself as
a type of CAPTCHA.
10. Time-limited
Another way to boldly get around spam is to include a time
limit to fill out a form, as bots fill out in seconds and people usually take
longer.
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