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Captcha entry, Captcha bypass, captcha – 3 bizarre terms- do they have anything in common?

Well, Captchas are those short tests we have to pass when we want to register to or participate in all kinds of online community platforms such as forums and blogs that require deciphering a captcha test. Captcha comes to prevent automated bots from spamming all kinds of online platforms and websites. Captcha filters robots leaving human users to enjoy the services of certain sites that request Captchas.

Just like in any field, some people found a way to bypass this wall of captcha.
Cptcha can manage bots, preventing them from spamming the web with textual links and other advertising content? No problem.
We’ll hire people to do the captcha tests for others and the spam will continue.

This what “Captcha Bypass” or “Captcha Entry services” means – hiring low paid human workers to carry out captcha tests – to make “captcha entry”.
The worker is paid 1$ for 1100 correct Captcha entries. Some pay more, some pay less, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that human cheap work power replaces the automated spammers or bots by performing repeatedly Captcha bypasses, entering Captcha codes, and contaminating websites with spam!

Just like the old song says: “Money makes the world go around”.

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…

Captcha, an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turning Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart“ is a challenge-response test used by websites before user’s registration. This test is mostly based on distorted text with textured background and placed into a small box given at the bottom of the page registration.

The reason websites use Captchas is a strong wish to filter spam sent by spam bots.
Yet weak Captchas can be defeated by PWNTCHA!

What is a PWNTCHA?

Captcha, is a decoder project that decodes Captchas by using visual techniques. It stands for “Pretend We’re Not a Turning Computer but a Human Antagonist” as well as PWN Captchas.

Some Captchas are pretty weak. They consist of one single distorted word and an image, the letters are not rotated or not rotated enough, there is no deformation, or weak deformation, no color variation and weak perturbation. Such Captchas are cracked by PWNTCHA 92% of the time, in a pretty short time (somewhat around 10 seconds! Not more! )

Some harder Captchas, more challenge response tests, consist of 10 words displayed in clutter and distortion and the user is asked to name 3 of them. PWNTCHA succeeds to decode those Captchas 33% of the time.

As a matter of fact PWNTCHA proves the inefficiency of the common Captcha!

Maybe time has come for Captchas to be more difficult for humans as well as computers?…

omment Spam Prevention Techniques

Who and How in Comment Spam

Before talking about how we can prevent comment spam , we should define what is the target and how it is done.
The who or what is any web application that allows free comment for visitors and/or accepts hyperlinks submitted by users, for example -  blogs, forums, wiki, guestbooks and social platform.
Regarding the how, one should know that most of comments spam is done by robots that post thousands of random comments and commercial ads combined with hyperlinks.

Why?

Spammers aim at achieve a higher rank for their site as well as relevant traffic.  Google algorithm evaluates websites statistically by putting them in a higher or lower page rank, according to the amount and quality of their backlinks.

How to prevent comment spam?

Captcha – An example of validation technique
One way is to use technique of validation. Captcha is a test (mostly a distorted text with an image to be deciphered by the user) given to a user before submitting his comment. It verifies the user as a real human being, not a robot spammer.
Yet Captchas are not undefeated as there are weak Captchas that might be cracked by bots.

User Authentification
An alternative for comment spam prevention is “user authentication”. User is asked to set up a username and a password before he is allowed to comment on the site.

Links with no Power
Websites can combat comment spam by disallowing links in posts. A tag Rel=”nofollow” is attributed on the spammer’s comment and Google ignores the link from being pageranked – so basically the goal of achieving higher rank is denied.

Spammers Identification (Project Honey Pot)
Lately a new project named “Project Honey Pot” has started to track comment spam. Thousands of traps are installed all over the net watching what comment spamming is being posted by robots to blogs and forms. The collected data is available for all countries to block comment spammers.

Spam tracking Plugin
Akismet is another solution. It is a plugin that trackbacks all kinds of blogs and forums. If the comment is already known as spam – it’s never published.

What about the future?
No doubt that in the future comment spam prevention techniques will get more sophisticated just as well as new ones will be developed. This is due to the fact that achieving absolute defeat of comment spam is not only an ongoing mission but quite not an easy one also…

Lately there’s been a considerable increase of information regarding Captcha’s code cracking as more and more spam bots and hackers find their ways to bypass Capchas. Actually, one doesn’t have to be a sophisticated robot in order to crack a complicated Captcha. It can just make hundreds attempts to decipher a Captcha until it reaches full success.

A bot spammer is never tired of doomed attempts. A bot spammer never gets frustrated when it fail.
As for human users, I, myself, get pissed off with Captcha after the third attempt.
If I fail to decipher a Captcha three or four times, I simply give up!

That brings me to the following idea: Wouldn’t it be wiser to set a limit to Captchas wrong attempts? Let’s say after 5 attempts the user is blocked and can no longer activate a false account? This suggestion enables Captcha to function as a spam blocker right from the beginning!
Yes, I know it denies accessibility for human users, but than it stops spammers from endless cracking Captchas attempts.
I believe that under the circumstances less human users are preferable.

Massive bot spammers are less desirable but you know what people say: Sometimes – less is more.

Who needs Captcha protection service?

As a matter of fact – everyone needs captcha!
Whether you are a private navigator with a private e-mail  or an owner of a blog or a forum – if you don’t want others to abuse your platform and / or spam it for their own good, you need protection.

Why do people use spam?

One of the reason for online spamming is the wish to achieve a higher “Search Engine Ranking”, which can be done, among other tactics, like SEO and advertising networks, by getting relevant links to your site.
How can one get more links to his website? Among other, getting additional links can be done by simply inserting messages with your link into other websites that allow it, like forums or blogs.

Why do business marketing use spam?
For the same reason – to achieve a higher ranking as well as better traffic to their business through posting advertisements to mailboxes of innocent users as well as to all kinds of online platform (blogs, forums and social media platforms such as facebook, digg and even flickr).

How is it done?
It should be noted that only a minority of online business uses manual spammers while the majority uses spam robots.
The automatic spamming is done by bots that spider the web for all kinds of  users forms and then post a spam message of advertisement.

Can you protect your e-mail box or website from spammers?
Yes, you can. One of the options is to use Captcha and thus prevent registration of spamming bots to your site, or, if we talk about mail-spamming, to use Hydmail which is a special kind of Captcha programmed for mailbox and cannot be deciphered by spam robots.

Click here to read more about captcha security applications

Captcha is known for being a spam prevention effective solution in regards to all forms of spam that can be done by bots. The reason for that lies in the fact that Captcha is a test that validates web users as human beings, just as the name implies: CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

What form of spam Captcha can prevent then?

Among others, Captcha is able to prevent forum spam, comment spam or spam in blogs, guestbook spamming and newsgroup spam.

Forum spam – What, How and Why?

Forum spam is a process of posting abusive advertisements or unwanted messages on internal forums, generally by spam-bots. It is done by inserting a link or dozens of links into the forums. The links come with minimum text and the content is mostly irrelevant to the forum but still it is inserted in hope that it will prevent spam filters from carrying out their mission. By adding links to the forum, the spammer strive to attract potential customers to its site.

Comment spam / Spam in blogs

Similar to forum spam, links that point to the spammer’s website are inserted into blogs using the section of comments given by the blog.

The one who is behind these comments spam is doing it in order to increase his site search ranking! Inserting as many links as possible, while using keywords as anchors, also increases the number of potential visitors or paying customers to the spammer’s site.

Guestbook spamming

According to Wikipedia, a guestbook is “a paper or electronic means for visitors to acknowledge their visitation to a site, physical or web-based, and leave their name, postal or electronic address (if desired), and a comment or note, if desired. It is used at museums, hotels, churches and so on”.

This applies to the web as well.
Web sites use guestbooks to display the type of visitors who visit the site as well as getting a feedback from the visitors about the site. (The visitor is not required to open an account and can leave a public comment).

Commercial website spammers may leave endless comments adding links to their site for the same reason mentioned before – increasing the number of potential visitors or paying customers to the spammer’s site.

Newsgroup spam

Newsgroup spam is a process of posting endless articles with faked and falsified article headers to usenet newsgroup in order to disrupt and make the newsgroup unreadable.

Can we fight against those forms of spam?
Yes. We can!

Since captcha demands the user to prove he’s a human being (by solving a simple test that humans complete easily) bots that run into the captcha test while trying to sign them selves up to all kinds of online platforms such as forums, guestbooks or blogs – are being stopped simply because they can not complete the test.
In other words -
Captcha is the perfect solution for online spam prevention!

Captcha is known for its efficiency in ensuring proper use of websites and online application by validating that the user is human and not a bot or some other automatic machine.
This article lists some of the security applications / uses of CAPTCHA:

Comments spam prevention

Comments spam is used in blogs and forums mostly for raising search engine ranking of websites. A “spammer” who wants to get some free traffic to his website might get into a variety of blogs or forums and add comments with textual (using keywords as the anchor) links leading to his website.
The advantage of using captcha in blogs and forums adding comments option is that it can block automatic machines that can do this kind of spamming. Bots don’t know how to read captcha and thus cannot pass it.

Online Surveys and Polls

When you want to trust the results of an online poll and be sure that only human votes are counted – use Captcha. This way you’ll ensure that only human will take a part in the poll and at the same time prevent the possibility of biased results (by bots).

Spam blockers / Protecting Email Addresses from spam scrapers

Captcha is also known as a great spam blocker against spammers who search the web for e-mail addresses. You want to allow your users to send you emails but don’t want to get spammed by bots? All you have to do is to ask your website visitors to solve a confusing Captcha before you show your e-mail.
Just the same, the CAPTCHA test can be used to protect from massive registration to free email accounts.

Search Engine Bots

Have some confidential pages on your website that you don’t want the search engine bots to reveal (and index)? Use Captcha to prevent all kinds of bots, including those of the search engines, to get to them.

Free anti spam

Lots of companies wish to accept mails only when they are 100% sure that the e-mail sender is not an automated machine. One of the easiest ways to get this is by using Captcha as a spam filter.