As a kid who was raised in a world of fantasies and fairy tails I believed the world is divided into two groups: good guys and bad guys. Naturally the good ones were my heroes. They were winners, never lost a battle and all the legends and fairy tails had a happy end.
As I grew older my perception has changed. I began to realize that the larger group belongs to “bad guys”.
What’s the connection between good and evil to Captcha?
Well, Captcha belongs to the “good guys”. It is based on the idea of assisting websites to filter automated bots and to enable registration to web sites for human being users. This small test of an image with distorted alphanumeric characters enables to tell apart humans and machines.
On the other hand stands a smart competitor, i.e, spammers, hackers, web sites that wish to promote ranking in S E O engines, who works hard by using bots to crack Captcha – not without success.
Abusing Captcha
Another variation of fighting Captcha is abusing it instead of cracking it.
The following information which came online a couple of monthes ago, under the headline “Paypal Fraud With Captcha” tells about a phishing URL of Paypal (Paypal allows buyers on line to transfer money to merchant account without exposing his credit card while shopping), which asks for feedback on shopping on line, but before giving his feedback the user has to fill personal details: his name, e mail address and Paypal password. Afterwards, a Captcha test appears which users have to decipher and enter.
It’s so simple. Now the way to accumulate personal information and create faked accounts is free! No need for bots, no need for hard work, just exploiting good will of innocent users by the help of “good guys Captcha”…
By the way, the phishing URL has been blocked by “Trend micro Smart Protection Network”, so we have a happy end after all!
