reCAPTCHA

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anthony88guy
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reCAPTCHA

Post by anthony88guy »

Usually before I go to sleep I take a quick look at what CNN has to offer.

Well tonight I found something very interesting. Call reCAPTCHA.

Just a quick "about" reCAPTCHA:

When books are being digitized some of the words cannot be successfully converted. reCAPTCHA is an attempt to use CAPTCHA's as a means of converting hard to read words. It does this by asking for two words, one word is the control (known) and the other is unknown. If the known word is correctly inputted then the system assumed he/she has also entered the other word correctly... with enough inputs we can then assume what the word is.


Official reCAPTCHA Website
CNN Story Link
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JayBird
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Post by JayBird »

Saw that last week, looks like a cool idea
djot
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Post by djot »

-
Well,

this is pretty much the same as "please enter 1+4" captchas?

Easy Quiz:
Please enter corretly: "devs networks forums"


djot
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jayshields
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Post by jayshields »

djot wrote:this is pretty much the same as "please enter 1+4" captchas?
No it's nothing like that. Did you read the article?

It uses words from old books which are currently being scanned and converted into digital format by an OCR device. It shows you one word which the OCR correctly read, and one word which it cannot make sense of. The user types both words into the input field. If the word already known matches then it's presumed that you typed the other word correctly too. So everytime a CAPTCHA is solved you are helping convert old books into digital format.

I wouldn't say it's any better at stopping bots than a regular CAPTCHA but it's certainly a good idea.

If we're talking about the best bot prevention then I really like that KittenAuth system.
djot
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Post by djot »

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Did you read the article?
Yes, in the meaning of a captcha to protect a form.

The incorrect "word" from my quiz above - devs networks forums - would then be recognized by clever people like us two and we would all know then, that the correct word (which submits the form successfully) is DevNetwork Forums.

right?

And the idea/technique is then pretty much the same as "please enter 1+4:"


djot
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

Not quite.

It sounds to me like they give you a captcha, and only one of the words is actually checked. The other is stored away in a database.

They don't actually just make up words and ask you to "make sense out of it." They give you the picture of the word from the book, and everyone types in what they see. Then, they check all of the answers and the answer that a good majority of people typed in is assumed to be the correct word.

Then, the word is put into the eBook, or whatever. But that particular word means nothing to the captcha and authorization itself, just using the captcha in order to get some work done.
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

superdezign wrote:just using the captcha in order to get some work done.
Yeah - that was the point of the article, not about how captchas protect forms from bots.

Think seti@home meets Google book search.
d3ad1ysp0rk
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Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

Ha, that's pretty funny. That's what my work today is about, implementing reCaptcha. :)
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DaveTheAve
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Post by DaveTheAve »

Well, I tried implementing this amazing Captcha (Well, at-least better than my current one) but I can't seem to get it OUT of control of my current CSS. I mean, come-on, why doesn't reCaptcha come with it's own CSS that you can use to over-ride your current CSS in-cases of being inherented.
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

DaveTheAve wrote:Well, I tried implementing this amazing Captcha (Well, at-least better than my current one) but I can't seem to get it OUT of control of my current CSS. I mean, come-on, why doesn't reCaptcha come with it's own CSS that you can use to over-ride your current CSS in-cases of being inherented.
Maybe they didn't understand how !important it was. :lol:
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

superdezign wrote:Maybe they didn't understand how !important it was. :lol:
nice 8)
d3ad1ysp0rk
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Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

DaveTheAve wrote:Well, I tried implementing this amazing Captcha (Well, at-least better than my current one) but I can't seem to get it OUT of control of my current CSS. I mean, come-on, why doesn't reCaptcha come with it's own CSS that you can use to over-ride your current CSS in-cases of being inherented.
I've had no problems with it.. care to show an example page? The author of the software has been EXTREMELY helpful, and instead of complaining on here and not using it, maybe you should ask him about it? He added a feature in over the weekend for the company I work for..
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DaveTheAve
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Post by DaveTheAve »

Well i don't have an example but I have this CSS hack I used to fix it (well about 99% fix it):

Code: Select all

/* Fix the ReCaptcha's Style */

div#recaptcha {

        width: 318px;

        margin: 0 auto 0 auto;

}



div#recaptcha * {

        margin: 0px !important;

        padding: 0 !important;

        border: 0 !important;

        font-family: helvetica,sans-serif !important;

        font-size: 8pt !important;

        color: black !important;

        position: static !important;

        top: auto !important;

        left: auto !important;

        right: auto !important;

        bottom: auto !important;

}



div#recaptcha input {

        width: 100% !important;

        height: 20px !important;

        position: relative !important;

	border: 1px solid #C6A056 !important;

        margin-left: 15px !important;

}



div#recaptcha label {

	width: 100%;

	text-align: center;

}
However, I really really need help with the php library reCaptcha came with; basically, every global statement it calls comes up null on my system. BTW, I never edited recaptchalib.php.
Last edited by DaveTheAve on Sun Jun 10, 2007 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DaveTheAve
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Post by DaveTheAve »

Alrightly, this was an EXTREMELY BASIC AND EASY FIX!!!!

If your getting errors similar to mine: Every global called in recaptchalib.php was returning null. The problem is that your server is set up correctly (yes correctly... well at least secure when it comes to auto-assigning globals)...

To fix change the first three lines of PHP in recaptchalib.php:

Code: Select all

$recaptcha_api_server = 'http://api.recaptcha.net';
$recaptcha_api_secure_server = 'https://api-secure.recaptcha.net';
$recaptcha_verify_server = 'api-verify.recaptcha.net';
and reprogram them to set as globals on the more secure system by replacing them with:

Code: Select all

$GLOBALS['recaptcha_api_server']        = 'http://api.recaptcha.net';
$GLOBALS['recaptcha_api_secure_server'] = 'https://api-secure.recaptcha.net';
$GLOBALS['recaptcha_verify_server']     = 'api-verify.recaptcha.net';

Now before you knock me and this methoud try it. I know it seems simple, stupid and like it won't work; Trust me it did for me.
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Ollie Saunders
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Post by Ollie Saunders »

Kieran Huggins wrote:
superdezign wrote:Maybe they didn't understand how !important it was. :lol:
nice 8)
very nice.
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