
CRAPCHA: Completely Ridiculous And Phony Captcha that Hassles for Amusement - qdot76367
http://crapcha.com/
======
pbreit
All joking aside, is there any hope that the extremely user-hostile CAPTCHA
will go away any time soon? Half the time I see it I wonder if it's really
necessary. The other half I wonder if the service provider could be a bit more
clever or industrious.

~~~
kalleboo
> I wonder if the service provider could be a bit more clever or industrious

That takes time and effort, something which is often in short supply. Easier
to just slap any old captcha on there, even a mostly ineffective one will stop
the drive-by scripts.

I had to implement a non-CAPTCHA method of stopping spammer signups to our
forums, and after a day of work I had something that still let through 2-3
spammers a day. A CAPTCHA would have taken under an hour (plugins available)
and probably have stopped more.

~~~
eloisant
The problem of the captcha is not the efficiency, it's that it 's a horrible
user experience.

~~~
drivebyacct2
And the "best" user experience is to never require signup or login or credit
card verification or anything.

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elliottcarlson
Now it just needs a modem connecting sound as the audio mode.

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Auguste
I don't get it. This looks exactly the same as the other CAPTCHAs I see every
day.

~~~
meric
The letters aren't images, they're span elements.

~~~
nsns
_#include <sarcasm.h>_

~~~
avaku
;)

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mistercow
You can solve this, of course, by using the inspector in Chrome to select the
'<div class="code">', and then entering copy($0.innerText) in the console.

So this is actually easier to solve than the audio mode of reCAPTCHA.

~~~
julius
Thanks. I did not know about the $0 trick :)

~~~
glitchdout
I think you'll like this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOEw9iiopwI>

~~~
julius
I like it. Thanks.

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lessnonymous
This is missing the most important feature: a webcam shot of the person's face
when they see it.

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seles
I solved one correctly, it didn't do anything special.

<http://crapcha.com/show/#eaShnaILW1>

~~~
hung
Should've used 'ə'

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ghayes
For fun: a quick way to grab the crapchas on the page (that aren't protected
by cross-origin)

    
    
        $('.crapcha').each(function() {
          console.log(['Crapcha',
            $.map($(this).find('span'), function(letter) {
              return $(letter).text();
            }).join('') ]);
        });

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ChrisNorstrom
Evil Idea: Put up a really good, well paid, job ad with an application that
has this crapcha at the very end. Log IPs and see how long the average person
tries to submit their application.

Compile and release the statistics to your evil deed on HN.

~~~
uulbiy
It might actually work quite well. "Can you beat the crapcha? You are hired!"

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watsonc73
Ryaniar (a budget travel airline in Europe) have started using this type of
thing to their advantage. Each Captcha is about flight insurance, low cost, on
time etc. Annoying and good advertising at the same time.

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hfsktr
My favorite part was the (i) link went to a new tab with the site. Captcha
remind me of inkblot tests [1]. I wonder if there are any that actually use
those cards.

My favorite captcha experience: it only checked the first 3 characters matched
(as in only enter the first 3 of a two word captcha). I supposed maybe I
misunderstand how they work but I would have thought they checked against at
least one full word.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test>

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SagelyGuru
Ahh, so that is why we need all those unicode characters. Did you know that
you can register domain names like these now? So very useful....

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bfung
I just spent way too much time on this. Some of the icons (the ones you can't
view source and copy) come from <http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/>.
Allow hex input and you're golden.

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twiceaday
Chrome 26.0.1410.65 for OSX when I mouse over the text in the crapcha I get
the I-cursor.

~~~
diminoten
The best part about bug reports for hostile features is the workaround is
always, "Because fuck you, that's why!"

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nagisa
I could solve some of them quite well with only using a standard US keyboard
and US layout (the trick is to use the compose key)… As long as they don't
start including icons into the crapcha as well.

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np422
Most captchas look like that to me.

I frequently have to click reload half a dozen times or more before I find one
that I'm able to decode.

I think there is an opportunity for user experience improvement when it comes
to stopping bots.

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ultimoo
Nice! If only I had known about this before April fools!

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asciimo
I think they're really easy. For example:
<http://crapcha.com/show/#0rPMqgcbmt>

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apapli
I wasn't going to click on this but my intrigue got the better of my time. I
am so glad I clicked through, this put a big smile on my face.

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Sami_Lehtinen
Old stuff being repost:
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=crapcha](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=crapcha)

~~~
laurent123456
I wonder how the same link can be posted three times. I though HN was checking
if the URL had already been posted before allowing it?

~~~
jrochkind1
It does.

<http://crapcha.com/>

<http://mashable.com/2013/04/17/crapcha/>

<http://www.crapcha.com/>

[http://thomaspark.me/2013/04/crapcha-completely-
ridiculous-a...](http://thomaspark.me/2013/04/crapcha-completely-ridiculous-
and-phony-captcha-that-hassles-for-amusement/)

Except there does seem to be one old duplicate of the exact
`<http://crapcha.com/`> one. Perhaps it allows a re-post after enough time has
elapsed.

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prodections
prodention

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maeon3
In 50 years, the machine will be able to outperform the bottom 50% of the
human population in any conceivable endeavor or task behind a
keyboard/monitor. So CAPTCHAS will eventually be useless.

So it's an intelligence race. The more intelligent system (a computer, human,
or hybrid) will be able to deceive the lesser intelligent system (computer,
human or hybrid).

So the problem changes from: "Is the entity I am dealing with a computer or a
human" to: "Does the entity I am dealing with have intentions to gain an
unfair advantage over this transaction."

Humans have a part of our brain where we look for how others might be taking
advantage of us, the algorithms and data structures there are remarkable.
Computers will need to acquire those abilities if they are to manage the
exchange of money, goods and services.

~~~
mikeash
Captchas are really just an efficiency measure. You _could_ simply have a
human screen every single comment (or signup or whatever) and cull the spam.
But human time is too limited, so we come up with lesser measures.

When machine intelligence advances that far, we'll be able to easily automate
human-level examination of every single comment or submission or whatever. So
I think the problem will get better, not worse, with that level of power.

~~~
entropy_
At that point, you'll have this: <http://xkcd.com/810/>

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bdowney
Looks almost as annoying a Google's reCAPTCHA.

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OGinparadise
Not much to say other than LOL, maybe because it isn't that far off from the
supposedly real and readable ones.

Maybe put this at the last step of something the person really wants?

