Ads Captcha

This is a real funny video I found on Youtube.
It describes the difficulties of enjoying the online sphere because of Captcha tests…

If you own a website, a forum or a blog which requires users registration, and are anxious to block those endless spam bots – you certainly need Captcha.

Captcha is a small security image of distorted letters, and/or numbers, that is supposed to be copied by users in order to distinguish them (human users) from computers so the unwanted bots could be filtered out.

How can you use Captcha on your site?
You can buy captchas or get it for free, using an open source Captcha.

Following is a small list of Open Sources Captchas,
free resources for Captcha creation and/or implementation:

“Simple Captcha” is an open source Java  implementation for creating Captchas.  It gives assistance in generating good looking Captchas with a minimum of programming and little configuration.

JCaptcha is another open source Java framework for Captcha integration and definition.

“Securimage” is an open source Captcha script, for creating complex  images and Captcha codes. It can be easily added to an existing form on the website, and can run on most web servers as long as you have PHP installed. It generates Captcha images, it validates the typed codes, audible codes, it does everything!

“Joomla” is an open source CMS that has free Captcha plugins.

Plone Captcha is a free service for Plone captchas implementation for validating human input in online forms.

A combination of ads and Captcha

Do you know the difference between an ordinary captcha and captcha advertising?
The answer is simple – advertising captcha, just as the two words imply, is a combination of an ad and a captcha.

For those who are not familiar with the term, Captcha is a short test made of an image with distorted letters and / or numbers that has to be deciphered and than copied by the user before taking specific action, such as website registration, adding a comment and so on.
This is a popular way to detect spam bots and prevent them from abusing websites and online platforms.

Ad captcha is another way of using captcha for the same purpose, but instead of an image it uses an ad, by which 2 goals are achieved:
First, we have a captcha that filters and stops robots from abusing all kinds of online platforms.
Second, businesses get to advertise and brand their selves by using the captcha phrase and by that increasing their revenues or potential clients.

How does captcha advertising work?

A user starts some registration process. After filling out private details, instead of a captcha image – he sees an ad. The various of ads can be flash ads, banners, or video clips. The user gets a question that refers to the ad for which he has to figure out the correct answer (and type it, of course). The correct answer is used as a captcha verification.
The question might be something like: “what’s the name of the product in the ad”?

How do captcha ads promote sales?

While ordinary advertising might be ignored by innocent users, captcha advertising definitely could not be disregarded. Why? The user who reads the question related to the ad (the product / the business) must look at the ad in order to answer the question. He is obliged to think for some seconds about the answer (again – the product / business). He must type the answer (an additional step of referring to the product). And so, without further thinking, his attention is drawn to the product that appears in the ad…

What a psychological impact on the innocent user!!!

This dream captcha by Jeffrey Augustine runs on the net for several months now.
Yet it reserves to be mentioned also here, on the adscaptcha blog.
We aren’t that serious, you know.
We do have humor and can laugh about stuff, including ourselves or our online security application…

So what is this dream captcha?
Just like a dream catcher, which supposes to assure you a good night (or afternoon) sleep, only this one has a captcha code on it.
The artist who created the dream captcha says “that one use of Captcha is to protect a website’s identity” and that he decided to create it because of his interest to understand how the internet affects his life and more specifically his identity.

Living in the digital world of 2010 I must say that I don’t find it weird at all. Anything can happen, including nightmares to be demanded to pass a captcha test in order to get into people’s head…

Need a software or a program for Captcha developing so you can protect your website from abuse and other malicious activities of spam bots?  There are plenty of Captchas you can buy. Just serf the internet and you will find plenty of versions of Captchas developing tools as well as easy to implement captchas, most of them are not expensive at all.

Some of them, like the “Web Biz Captcha” and “Lanap Software” for example, offer free upgrade versions for life.
You may always try it for free before buying!

More than that, there is always the possibility of using Open Source Captcha, a recommended way of saving money…