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Turing Numbers... Why so hard to read??

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:11 pm
by seodevhead
I fully understand why some forms use turing numbers for validation, but why does the graphic have to be soooo hard to read sometimes? Why not a perfectly legible/readable graphic? How does making the graphic hard to read further prevent spambots? Is there something I don't know? :?

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:22 pm
by sman317
So it can not be relaiably scaned by on OCR software used by a spambot. 8O

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:31 pm
by seodevhead
Mann.... have I underestimated spambots that much!?!?! They use OCR for the turing numbers?????

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:41 pm
by Chris Corbyn
seodevhead wrote:Mann.... have I underestimated spambots that much!?!?! They use OCR for the turing numbers?????
Good ones do.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:51 pm
by Roja
seodevhead wrote:Mann.... have I underestimated spambots that much!?!?! They use OCR for the turing numbers?????
And worse.. There are sites that pay people to complete turing numbers for other sites, or offer access to free adult material, and so on. Turing tests honestly are almost completely useless, however, because spambots are such a big problem even a minor improvement is worthwhile.

Personally, I can't stand them. I'd rather sites didn't use them, but it isn't my choice. :)

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:54 pm
by seodevhead
What's a good option instead of using turing numbers?

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:23 pm
by bokehman
seodevhead wrote:What's a good option instead of using turing numbers?
A database of words that the spam might contain i.e. v1agra.

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 3:08 pm
by josh
seodevhead wrote:What's a good option instead of using turing numbers?
Email validation, and flagging accounts that sign up in a short period of time with the same email domain, or similar IP

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 4:27 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I bet you could use the spamassassin perl script or C file to scan for spam in on a website even though it's intended for email. That sounds like an interesting project to play with :)

WordPress has some built in spam detection based on keywords... that would be simple enough to implement if you could get a good list of keywords to handle point scoring on.