Should I Use CAPTCHA?

"CAPTCHA", which is trademarked the Carnegie Mellon University, is a short form for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It is a test, which helps the computer to differentiate between machines and human beings. It has the capability of creating and grading tests that automatically accepts all humans and rejects all machines.

It works on the assumption that humans can read distorted machines but machines usually cannot do so. You can know more about CAPTCHA and smart CAPTCHA at http://www.protectwebform.com/ and http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.

Most website owners find CAPTCHA very useful. Such tests help to prevent programs known as bots. Bots are programs that pretend to be humans and abuse the services of the internet. Bots try to sell or make you sign up for thousands of free mail services. The bots spam your inbox daily. They intrude into common chat rooms to accumulate personal information and publishing links to various sites for promotional benefits.

The bots create worms that can cause immense harm to your machine. They crack your passwords, assault privacy and use your personal information for commercial use without your permission.

CAPTCHA is a sure shot way of preventing these bots from creating havoc. The CAPTCHA asks the user to recognize the distorted image of letters and numbers usually with a string over a ‘noisy’ background. While it is easy for a human to decipher it, the machine usually cannot. And, that is how CAPTCHA distinguishes between a human user and a computer. Various large and small sites find CAPTCHA quite useful. No wonder, you see them in mail services, banking sites, blogs, chat rooms and similar places.

Spam seems to unfortunately be way of life. Day in and day out spammers are sending message after message into your e-mail system. But it's not just in e-mail that you may be hit with spam. Spam also is a problem in online newsgroups, logs, search engines and even instant messaging!

Some advertisers think spam is a good way to go to get their message out to the masses. It doesn't really cost them anything other than finding lists of e-mail addresses to send to, so they send mass amounts of mailings, and there is nothing you can do about to stop it, because laws do not allow holding a sender responsible for the number of mailings they send on the internet.

Usenet spam is a message that can be sent to twenty or more Usenet newsgroups. This kind of spam is usually targeted to those people who visit and read the newsgroups but do not post anything or give any kind of address. This kind of spam inundates the newsgroups with unnecessary advertisement and posts. It also challenges the owner’s ability to accept and manage the topics on the system.

The other kind of spam, which is the email spam usually targets individuals with direct messages. The list of ids that are targeted to spam can be created by scanning postings from Usenet or pilfering with the Internet mailing list. This kind of spamming does incur a little more money.

Article Source: http://www.myaddirectory.com

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