Impossible CAPTCHA : It Doesn’t Really Matter if You are Human or Not
CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Human Apart”. In a broader sense, CAPTCHA is defined as:
Type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade…
["simple" is the key word here]
CAPTCHAs present a very controversial topic: you can’t do without them as a webmaster and you can’t stand them as a user.
Some CAPTCHAs are just impossible to figure – no matter who you are (a robot or a human), you won’t pass the test. Here’s my gallery of impossible CAPTCHAs:
Read fast:
Source: mgccl.com
Find cats:
Source: Depressed Programmer
Train your imagination:
Source: Digg.com
Learn other languages:
Source: Sveit.com
Look for the hidden code:
Source: hidden-3d.com
Just guess:
(The second character cannot be figured I guess)
Source: neogaf.com
(Do you see text at all?)
Source: flickr.com
Know your 1-2-3:
Source: backreaction.blogspot.com
Post image: Geek and Poke via Search Engine People
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50 Responses to “Impossible CAPTCHA : It Doesn’t Really Matter if You are Human or Not”
Just gread – love those with the big math challenge.
By Tobias on May 18, 2009
Ann,
Funny gallery of impossible CAPTCHAs. I did a post on this exact topic back in December title Is Your CAPTCHA Killing Your Business?
Definitely the CAPTCHA is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to usability.
Thanks for the amusing post.
By Gerald Weber on May 18, 2009
Ann, this is an awesome killer post… had 7 retweets of my tweet within minutes
Cheers,christoph
By Christoph C. Cemper on May 18, 2009
The last mathematical capture is probably 0. Since inserting the value of pi for x gives numerical values for sin and cos not terms in x. And partial differential a number w.r.t. x is 0.
P.S. The 2nd character in the 3d. landscape looks like an N to me.
Nice capcha examples, great post.
By ned on May 18, 2009
Whoops my mistake. x=Pi is after the partial differentiation.
By ned on May 18, 2009
480.
By Manley on May 18, 2009
Ann!
I’m surprised to your finds again and again.
They looks so simple but very interesting.
I think that is a really killer post.
Twitit and bookmark it on Delicious.
By seobag on May 18, 2009
42!
By Karl on May 18, 2009
I got number 5 its one of those magic eyes
it says 438
magic eyes are fun but not everyone can do them…not so good for business…lol
By cybernautSEO on May 18, 2009
Hi Ann,
Hysterical! Thanks so much for finding these. Given our line of work, I’m always collecting funny and impossible CAPTCHAs. The Matrix stream and 3D terrain are among my new favorites!
You’re also right that it doesn’t matter if it’s a human or bot doing the submitting, but not necessarily because the puzzles are too complex. In the past few years spammers and hackers have started hiring teams of workers to submit spam/abuse to Web forms for pennies (even for forms that don’t use any kind of CATPCHA).
If it’s humans submitting spam anyway, why bother trying to distinguish computers from humans? Ah, the irony.
Thanks for a fun post!
By Larissa Reynolds on May 18, 2009
The formula on know your 123 is 6. Wolfram Alpha has a use afterall.
By Ned on May 18, 2009
Hey Ann! Would love to post this directly into facebook… where is your facebook app? ShareThis is really exceptional for ease of posting
By Dianna Kersey on May 18, 2009
Wow what an unusual collection. I have never come across most of these captures before – very amusing!
By Mandy on May 19, 2009
I have a more interesting captcha, I hope.
Try a few times, the animals change:
http://tools.lbi-netrank.co.uk/density-engine/?url=seosmarty.com
By Manley on May 19, 2009
What a funny article! But I like it very much. Would let me introduce it on my blog(Japanese)? I’m sure to give credit to you and put a link to the post there.
By Kenichi Suzuki on May 19, 2009
What a funny article! But I like it very much. Would you let me introduce it on my blog(Japanese)? I’m sure to give credit to you and put a link to the post there.
By Kenichi Suzuki on May 19, 2009
these are great – never could see the hidden code
By Zion on May 19, 2009
@Manley, yeah, yours looks great! But it is not impossible though
@Kenichi, sure, no problem
By Ann Smarty on May 20, 2009
Are you kidding?
Who can read those.
On a more serious point… do you think that adding a captcha stops people from responding.
I know it only takes a few seconds to type in an easy to read one, but I’m sure some people can’t be bothered and your website misses a potential sale or contact.
Thanks for the examples.
Bill
By Bill Simcox on May 21, 2009
i had faced many probs filling CAPTCHA its really an eye teaser..
By SixChannels on May 22, 2009
@Bill, the short answer is “yes” – CAPTCHA does provide some usability challenge. Unfortunately, we seldom can get along without it. A good way out is to make it entertaining like the one linked to in the comment above:
http://tools.lbi-netrank.co.uk/density-engine/?url=seosmarty.com
By Ann Smarty on May 22, 2009
There may be a fun marketing angle here, especially for small niches. Especially if these form submissions wouldn’t be for lead submissions from potential customers.
Maybe registering for an event would require a fun or specific question. An example would be an elite math club might require an equation to be solved.
By Jesse Friedman on May 27, 2009
Ironic that the first post I read on Sphinn is this – registering with that site required a simple sum AND a character captcha and was so unclear it took 3 attempts to get past!
By Andy on May 28, 2009
That’s too funny. I understand CAPTCHAs are necessary, but some of them are hard to read!!! Hopefully someone can come with a decoder ring or some glasses for them soon.
By MLDina on Jun 1, 2009
In the meanwhile I am using Twitter’s CAPTCHAs to name the songs on my upcoming album.
Annoying or not they are already a part of our life
By fjfonseca on Jun 4, 2009
There is very interesting, there is very fun.
By TiamatInc on Jun 4, 2009
This is a GOOD one Ann! SOme of these they are coming up with will make you crosseyed.
By Seo Consultant on Jun 5, 2009
I got number 5 its one of those magic eyes
it says 438
magic eyes are fun but not everyone can do them…not so good for business…lol
By Sohbet on Jun 17, 2009
Its a thin line between stopping your hassle and killing any user interaction completely. Comments and signups cannot be without any work or moderation can they, thats life!
By paul on Jul 9, 2009
Cool! I saw the CAPTCHA Cats. It’s in Rapidshare.com, but their deactivated it. I believe that was because of the difficulty!
By Mike on Jul 15, 2009
LOL these are just too funny – thanks a lot for the list.
By fan on Jul 15, 2009
Most of them cannot be passed, I suppose
By Aaron on Jul 15, 2009
So true.. I have been fighting with my dev team on removing captcha from landing pages too.. I told them I myself have hard time reading it.. but they think tht am just making it up.. neways..
things apart.. i loved that u have a category called SEO Ethics..
Kudos for that
By Sandeep Bali on Aug 3, 2009
So true…I recently was requesting service from a website and I could not get the captcha to work. After leaving with a serious ding to my self esteem (turns out I’m not human). I emailed them. Never heard a response, guess I will go with someone else.
By Jason Capshaw on Aug 13, 2009
Hey Ann,
Such good finds. =)
These captcha’s are really very impossible most of the times… It’s actually sometimes becoming irritating.
Another one good post from you.
Thanks!
By Bennie Stark on Aug 20, 2009
The cats one is easy.
But I simply cannot do the Magic Eye things. Never could.
By Nulono on Sep 26, 2009
This CAPTCHA is impossible. This is very bad for site.
By Panica on Oct 15, 2009
i lived a very bad day because the first captcha you mentioned (that one of the cats) .it used on rapidshare i have to download a very important file to complete my research. and my supervisors keep asking about the results and i spend the whole day tring to solve this captcha with no hope until i called the lap in the uk to send me another copy of the file
if i can catch the developer who developed this captcha i would kill him.lol
By ahmed on Nov 1, 2009
Good Stuff. Some hard to read Captchas are so very annoying.
By Dallas SEO on Mar 29, 2010
I’ve come across some like this including ones that were in letters and sybols. Some I didn’t even have on my keyboard
By doctor carter on Aug 29, 2010
Funny Post…
The one that looks like a calculus captcha is nuts! I have seen something similar trying to joining a money forum, but that’s beyond what I experienced there.
By Dallas TX SEO Consultant on Mar 3, 2011