They began paying people to solve CAPTCHAs for them, and harnessed machine learning so that bots could crack codes themselves. The system was effective for a while, but hackers got more sophisticated. So, AltaVista’s engineers forced users – human and bots – to read a distorted piece of text that was legible (supposedly) to the human eye. Their answer to the problem was to create an on-screen test that was relatively easy for a human to pass, but extremely difficult for bots.Īt the time, computers could only read clean, easy to read text. They needed to find a way to preventing bots from adding spam and malicious URLs to their link database. Hiding scammer identities via VPN servicesĪlthough they have been around in various guises for decades, the first modern CAPTCHAs were created in the late 90s by the then-popular search engine, AltaVista.Purchasing multiple items (think ticket sales scams).Hopper, and John Langford.ĬAPTCHAs are designed to prevent scammers and spammers from using bots to commit unwholesome acts online, such as: You can take that up with the originators of the term - Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Yeah, we know that’s not strictly an acronym. But what exactly is that pesky CAPTCHA test? Why is it necessary? And how does it work?ĬAPTCHA is an acronym for…well… a bit of a mouthful really: We’ve all had to do it – prove that we’re not a robot when browsing online.
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