Ads Captcha

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.

What is ReCaptcha?

To understand what is reCaptcha we first need to define the term “Captcha”.
Captcha is a test made of an image and distorted text that has to be solved by human users when they want to subscribe to websites that want to make sure the user is a human being and not a bot or a computer (= preventing spam).

Recaptcha is a system that uses Captchas to digitize books text for the same purpose: to ensure the user is not a computer or bot.
Computers can’t navigate sites that are protected by Captchas.

Every day 200 millions of Captchas are being solved. It takes about 10 second to decipher a Captcha but about 150,000 hours of work to accumulate them. This is where reCaptcha comes and help in channeling the big effort spent on Captchas solving into reading books by digitizing process.

How is it done?
By using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program books text and pages are scanned and transformed into forms that are impossible for computers to decipher. Every word that can’t be read by OCR is placed on an image and displayed together with another word which can be read correctly, that is a “control word”. The user who wants to subscribe to a site that demands verification of human users, is asked to decipher both words. If he solves the “control word” the system assumes the answer is correct for the new one also.

Captchas are taken from internet archives, the New York Times and alike and can be used as protector from mail spam bots as well.

Captcha is a test that comes to validate web users as humans (=rather than computer bots).
the captcha test can be used for site registration, for example – just before registration is completed the user is asked to copy an  image with distorted letters. Since those letters are captured in images and are displayed randomly, and bots can not “read” images, the CAPTCHA test suppose to “stop bots from passing the test and using the web for their inetrests”.

But what about people who suffer from some kind of sight impairment including blindness?
They can not solve the captcha test (they can not see the captcha image well and thus can not copy it) and thus, just like bots, can not register to sites and other online services that use captcha.
But do not worry, there’s a solution for this problem and it called: Audio Captcha.

People who suffer from sight impairment need to pass an audio captcha test in which they are asked to listen to a series of numbers or letters with a lot of background noise and then repeat them through typing the letters/numbers.
The idea is that humans can filter the background noise but a computer bot – can’t.

Unfortunately the audio captcha test is not perfect.
First, there are people who suffer from sight impairment / blindness that also have hearing problems.
Second, statistic shows that only 46% of audio captchas users are able to decipher the test and that the process takes 65 seconds at least , relatively much longer than a textual Captcha (about 12 seconds).
Third, most of the sites don’t use audio-captchas yet.

What other transformations will make the captcha test suitable for all?
Only time will tell…

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.

Captcha protects your website from unwanted users such as automated machines, bots and spammers. Once you have decided to use Captcha for your site, there are some important criterions you must take into consideration:

Accessibility
Captcha must be accessible for every user – for the normal and the blinds.
That means that the captcha image shouldn’t be too small and it should offer an alternative (audio one for example) for the ones who can’t see well or don’t see at all.

Image security / complexity
Captcha images should not be easy to percept.
They should be vague and distorted so no bot can solve it – only humans.

Script security
A Captcha code should consist of images that are not readable by bots as well as questions that can be answered only by using human intelligence.

Security of CAPTCHA wide spread use

When Captcha system is adopted by a great number of sites it could weaken its security effect, since a parser could make it easy for bots to solve the Captcha test. Since it is highly important that Captcha will be of strong security even when it is widely used, it is recommended to use well-tested implementations of *reCAPTCHA than to create your own CAPTCHA script.

* reCAPTCHA is a free service that helps to digitize old media such as books, newspapers and radio shows so they can be used as CAPTCHAs

Online Marketing Solutions / Online Branding Solutions
Businesses that want to succeed in the online world should know how to market their selves, meaning they must know their target market / audience and the channels they can use in order to get to this audience.

The following online marketing solutions can be used for branding a new business as well as for promoting an old one. Most of these marketing channels are good for most of the markets / target audiences, and yet this is not an axiom.

My advice to you is to think thoroughly about your target market, what your potential clients are looking for and where (online) they might look for it and only after that take a step, choose your marketing sources and build your online marketing strategy.

What are the best online marketing sources out there?

Sponsored Links on Search Engines / Search Advertising

Sponsored links on search engines are textual paid ads that show up on search results pages. Since these textual ads are keywords related they are considered as ads of high relevance both for the user and the advertiser.

Two of the most popular search advertising services are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search.

Banner Ads

Banner is a clickable graphic image, used on websites, that attempts to promote a service or a product through catching the user’s attention. ‘Though banners ads come in many forms and sizes, the most common form is a rectangle image in one of the following sizes: 460 pixels wide by 60 pixels high, 460 x 55 or 392 x 72.

Textual Ads

Textual ads are online advertisements that use nothing but text based hyperlinks.
The advantages of the textual ads are:
1. They can be downloaded immediately (as opposed to banner ads).
2. They cannot be blocked by all kinds of ads blocking programs that usually block banner ads.
3. They are easy to assimilate within the text content and thus are considered less “pushy” in the eyes of the web user.

SEO / Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a method through which one can promote his site on search engines’ generic results to earn a better and highly targeted traffic.
Promoting a website through SEO is one of the best online marketing solutions, ‘though it is just as well very time consuming. One of the reasons for this is that search results can vary from websites to landing pages to images, documents and even videos. This leads to the fact that anyone who wants his website or service to be shown in most of the search results and at the top of them, must invest lots of time and creativity as well as money in creating an appealing website, video and so on.

SMO / Social Media Optimization
Social Media Optimization focuses on optimizing one’s online presence within online communities and social platforms, while aiming to get this “social presence” to the top of search results.
Facebook, for example, is a social website that can be used for business promotion through networking as well as by getting the business profile into the top of search results for a relevant term (keyword).
See for example - http://www.facebook.com/itsyourturn

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is an online marketing solution that increases brand awareness or product sales through creating a buzz on different platforms such as social platforms, emails and video websites.
This youtube video of bing.com is a great example for the power of viral marketing.
Since the video is funny there’s a big chance that people will forward it to their friends to watch (or link to it just like I did!) thus enhancing the awareness to bing as a new search engine and a brand. At the same time, since the video will get lots of views on youtube, there’s a high probability for it to be shown on relevant search results (see the video results at the top of the search results page for the term “bing”.

The initials for Captcha are: “Completely Automated Public Turning test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

But when searching for the term on the web it seems like users tend to perform some typing errors as well as misspellings.

The most common misspellings for the captcha term are: captsha, capatcha, capttcha and chaptcha, while sometimes these misspellings are used also as plural forms.

Nevertheless, Captcha is a short task that comes to distinguish between a real human user and a bot or an automated machine, in hope to avoid spam and other abuses on the web.

Captcha Definition

Captcha is the abbreviation of “Completely Automated Public Turning test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

What is Captcha?

Captcha is some kind of a test or a task that human user will perform easily while a bot or an automated script should find it difficult to carry out as well as time-consuming.
Captcha tests are used in situations in which websites owners need to be sure that the user is not a bot and as such doesn’t intend to misuse their online platforms and/or the free services they offer (such as free blog and forum registration or free e-mail accounts).

By using Captcha program the server prevents e-mail spamming, commercial promotion in forums, vandalism and so on.

Captcha System

The Captcha system is based upon visual perception, analogical human intelligence or sensual skills.

The most common Captcha control contains an image of distorted letters or numbers and other signs that the user need to copy. Sometimes a serial of images appear of which a single subject should be defined, sometimes a question to be solved appears, all to ensure security and protection from automated abuse.