Lee Love Photography

Advertising, Editorial Advertising Photography

CAPTCHA: What the &*%$# is Wrong with the Computer Industry ?

What kind of industry would create and use a technology that drives its customers away ? Is anyone else getting increasingly more annoyed at the use of web sites that insist on using these insane awful CAPTCHA forms ? And is it just me are these getting harder and harder to read ? Now this might be a leap for some non-Apple users but every time I use a site that has a totally unreadable CAPTCHA system I can't help but wonder how would Apple engineers design a CAPTCHA technology. Apple is known for their user friendly approach to the design of their products. Not only is the engineering usually unique but the products are amazingly functional. So when I try to use a site that has a CAPTCHA form that is so hard to use and read it makes me crazy.

No one likes spam and as someone who runs a blog I get my share that I have to remove. But come on is this the best we have to offer users as a way to block spam ? Are you telling me the best and brightest can't come up with a better solution than this ?

CAPTCHA's are purposely suppose to prevent bots, i.e. computers from recognizing the words displayed BUT we are at a point where they are now not able to be read by humans. In 2011 it's hard to believe this is the best we can do to prevent spam.

Here are a couple of my favorites that I copied of the system Craigslist.org uses to prevent spammers. I wonder how many of you can read these after working all day ?