EdB's Turing Test beats Captcha anyday.

Captchas are frequently very breakable, but it depends on if someone is targeting your "application and captcha". So like since b2evolution doesn't have a captcha by default, those who like to sell "spam b2evolution users" packages to low-lifes don't need to advertise "break their captcha for only 99.99 more". Also I think google's captchas are for some reason amazingly easy for people and amazingly hard for captcha-breakers to break. Not sure where I read that though.

I think Turing Test is quite nice - but hey I wrote it so of course I do. Having said that, it has some drawbacks. First, people know captcha so they either put up with it or don't bother commenting. If they don't bother you never hear from them. I've experienced situations where for some reason or other people couldn't figure out my TuringTest question - or just missed entirely that it was there. It will also block someone who knows your language and wants to comment on your blog but doesn't know your language well enough to pass your test unless your question is something like "type blue in the box".

To my way of thinking, the two advantages TuringTest has over captcha is (a) very easy on the server because you're not dynamically generating an image and (b) reasonably easy on the visitor because all they need is to see your text and be able to fill in a form field.

http://wonderwinds.com/hackblog.php/2007/12/27/turing-test-plugin-updated-for-v220 if you don't have it and want to check it out.

I guess I can't remember seeing carnivore's, uh, I mean google's captchas. I use google for searching once in a while. I'll have to have a look.

The captcha thing has turned into a little arms race of sorts. A new captcha scheme comes out and then it's decoded, then they change the scheme and it's decoded and so on and so forth. Turing test is much more difficult to automate, but of course if there's a will there's a way. Plus Turing was cool.

Thanks for the link to Turing test I will have a look.

[off topic]Both are a hurdle for humans to jump through to prove that they're a human, so they both lose ;)[/off topic]

Captchas should be put against a wall and shot

1) they're broken already
2) they inconvenience humans
3) they really don't stop spammers

EdB's bobo box on the other hand isn't quite as annoying, and at least it remembers that I once got the answer right so helpfully gives me a clue by filling in the box next time ;)

¥

FWIW, some captchas actually perform real work. The captchas are entries from scanned books and other documents that the OCR couldn't read with a high enough level of accuracy. So they put those words into a captcha and let someone else do the work for them. There are massive projects in India (and elsewhere) to scan documents and many captchas derive from those projects. Of course when someone enters the captcha they don't get paid. But someone gets paid somehwere. Kind of sneaky really.

PadreSol,

You are referring to the reCaptcha validation. There is a plugin for B2evolution, but my guesses are is not yet converted to B2evolution 2.4.x.
Link: http://gazette.flederma.us/index.php/2007/05/recaptcha_plugin

Have fun

Update: the reCaptcha plugin works fine on my blog.

http://www.blog.hemminga.net/B2evoforum/reCaptcha.png

Afwas,

Are you using reCaptcha for v.2.4.5? Also, what is preferred for trackbacks for v.2.4.5?

Thanks in advance.