Nobody likes captchas, spammers find them annoying and users find them obnoxious. But it’s an easy way to separate out the spammers from the users. There have long been many alternative solutions to the common captcha, and they all have their own issues.
One solution is to show the user an easy math problem: 2 + three =. While this is easier for the user, a quick Google search will give the spammer the answer.
Today I saw another alternative for captchas in Hasin’s blog post Time to put those FUCKING captchas to an end. His alternative captcha theory is to show you an easily identified object, a tree or statue, and have you say what it is. Spammer’s solution: run the image through Google’s photo search. The third example, where the picture asks “There are two ___” and then shows two squares and three triangles, did stump Google. But this image would not be difficult to parse and answer.
The current captcha system is painful, tedious, and can be comical at times, but it does knock off a majority of the spammers.