Cuter than CAPTCHAs?

July 30, 2008 by Laurence Veale

I had a little chuckle when I saw this alternative to the horrible CAPTCHAs that litter the path of good design.

An acceptable alternative to CAPTCHAs?

Alternative to CAPTCHA

An Illegible CAPTCHA…

Horribe CAPTCHA on ticket master website

Seen any other good alternatives?

7 Comments

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  1. Sinéad
    July 30, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    KittenAuth is the best alternative to text CAPTCHAs that I’ve ever seen.

  2. Katherine
    July 30, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    I don’t know why someone hadn’t thought of that “Are you human?” question before! Hilarious!

    But there’s nothing worse than a CAPTCHA you can’t read.

  3. Cormac Moylan
    July 30, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    No CAPTCHA is the best CAPTCHA. Spam detection should done on the server rather than on the users’ end as much as possible. It’s lazy development to be relying on CAPTCHAs in my opinion.

  4. Laurence Veale
    July 30, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    Agreed, Cormac – why expose the security failings of your internal system on the user interface.

    Askimet is a decent example of the approach you’ve outlined.

  5. Cormac Moylan
    July 30, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    Askimet is a fantastic technology.

    My biggest annoyance about CAPTCHAs is that they don’t distinguish between users and bots until one of them have interacted with the form. Why put your users through an unnecessary hurdle? It reeks of distrust and lackluster security.

  6. Beverly Hills
    August 17, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    CAPTCHAS are OK until you’ve put in a lot of thought on the comment, gotten it all typed in, are ready to submit it , and can’t read the CAPTCHA.
    What is just as bad are the questions that you would have to be in MENSA to comprehend !
    Beverly