How Does CAPTCHA Work? The New CAPTCHA Tests Explained!

    While using the internet you may have noticed CAPTCHA tests scattered around. You maybe thinking “what’s the point of all of this?” These automated tests are to tell humans apart from computer bots, who are used to create spam message and to prevent from any wrongful practices. CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Yeah, We do agree that the Tech community struggles with acronyms! All this means is it is a technique used to perform a test or series of tests to trick automated computer bots from spamming the internet.

     To know what CAPTCHA is we should go all the way back to its beginning in 1980s, When the then popular search engine AltaVista introduced a series of tests to prevent automated computer bots from entering malicious websites and URLs to their records. Then they thought what both Humans and Bots were good at, Which they realised to be Optical Character recognition. But, Bots were not able to recognize character, Which were crocked or camouflaged in a certain way. This avoided the Bots up to a certain extent, But as Bots kept getting smarter this method was getting conventional. Thus the new CAPTCHA also included the option to verify yourself by identifying characters they also introduced new CAPTCHA tests.

     The new CAPTCHA included the option to hear to alphabets in a distorted way for the visually impaired. The common type of CAPTCHA used today require us to verify certain types of images. This type of CAPTCHA is used to trick Bots by using images which are easy for Humans to recognize and hard for Bots. These are the old types of CAPTCHA which make sense for us to keep out the Bots. But, you may have noticed a CAPTCHA just asking you to tick mark the ‘I’m not a Bot’ circle. This is a more advanced method implemented by Google to easily differentiate between Humans and Bots. This method is actually ingenious as it detects Bots by the movement of cursor. Humans tend to use mouse in a zig-zag or a long path, But Bots just take the shortest path and move in a certain way. The new technique of CAPTCHA also includes factors like checking the history of user to differentiate between Humans and Bots, Which obviously raises privacy concerns.

     All of these CAPTCHA test are performed to prevent Bots from adding spam to the internet, Avoid hoarding during Online Sales, and to avoid Bots from scouting all the tickets to famous events. There are many CAPTCHAs around the internet to avoid the interference of Bots. But, we welcome all our Human and Non-Human viewers to read our awesome blogs. To read more of such informative Tech blogs and News, Subscribe to Rohan Wayangankar’s Blog.

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