Comments on: Fight Spam, Digitize Books

By: Adam Odnert

Adam Odnert — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:15:25 +0000

I’ve capitulated - we do use reCaptcha now - and it works very well (see my comment above before implementation).

By: aussie web directory

aussie web directory — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:52:08 +0000

I think captcha works wonders. lots of different options. I think the best one is when you add a basic math calculations

By: Jamp Mark

Jamp Mark — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:22:43 +0000

Captcha wards off spammers and bots but sometimes makes it harder for users to post. Well, for a site like this big where posts come in by millions, captcha helps a lot. Go for reCaptcha.

By: Adam Odnert

Adam Odnert — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:43:57 +0000

Our blog http://blog.gogopin.com doesn’t use captcha - and we just might start. It’s unbelieveable the number of bot generated comments that we receive on our blog posts. Mostly comprised of 8pt. illegal sordid text. Not helpful in the least. Until then this human, myself, is keeping captcha unemployed!

By: iis anyone listening at craigs ?

iis anyone listening at craigs ? — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:05:13 +0000

tired of mystery words
i have a big problem with the verification mystery words that we have to enter to place any ad on craigs. just placed an ad and had to try at least 30 times before the system accepted my guess. i know at least half of my attempts were correct. i can’t be the only one that has these problems. how do we actually let someone at craigs know that we dislike this system and not just complain to each other. thanks.

By: Team Tapper Realtors

Team Tapper Realtors — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Can you guys make a blog post addressing Craigslist’s decision to go “NoFollow” on all sites?

By: Essie B

Essie B — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:12:10 +0000

I’m embarrassed to admit that occasionally I have trouble reading the CAPTCHAs. I get screened just for poor vision, and I’m not even spam.

By: tatarin

tatarin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:52:33 +0000

you guys must be kidding me with this captcha … I tried 5 times before I could get it right … it’s not possible to understand wtf is written there. Get real!

By: JMK

JMK — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:06:08 +0000

Ultimately, there is someone downstream that buys something that the spammers’ customers are trying to sell. It’s at that point where the credit card companies can be used as a legal mechanism to shutdown accounts (or reverse charge) those companies who are sending spam. The government has already shutdown international gambling in this way, so there is a precident for legally enrolling the CC companies in the fight. The final piece of the legal mechanism required to make this work: that is to have an unambiguous “opt-opt” which cannot be circumvented by any of the wrangling that even legitimate commercial companies try to do with email - the answer - anyone that has “optout” as part of their email address, automatically removes permission for anyone to send them unsolicited mail. If it happens, the user then invokes the legal mechanism above and has the credit card company “reverse charge” for using their email address, simply by using their purchasing mechanism set up by whatever means the spammer’s customer’s are trying to sell their wares.

By: TB

TB — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:47:47 +0000

This is a fantastic idea to harness the otherwise wasted time of people solving CAPTCHAs. If computers can solve these CAPTCHAs then that is great news for the AI/visual processing community. If they can’t, then this is an effective way to stop spammers. People’s concerns about cheap labor in India to solve these CAPTCHAs is still founded though because you don’t have to solve very many to saturate craigslist with spam.