UnMarketing

Agree 100%. Super presentation and love the humor.

Debby

Never realized there was a name for Capchas! Thank you for that. Now I don't feel so bad for all the ones I couldn't read -- or just plain got wrong. I agree...when it's not EASY to sign up...we often walk away. Great lesson. Best of all was laughing at the "words" you were given to input.

U r hilarious Scott! I so enjoy the way you present info! I love u! Thank u for all it! Ur awesome!!!

haha hilarious, and very true. Hoping there are better methods to prevent bots and spam being developed so I never have to see a captcha again.

One time I wanted to sign up for a forum, and though it wasn't perfectly clear, I was about 99% sure that I was putting in the right words. I tried about 10 times, then gave up. Not sure if it was just a glitch, or I really wasn't typing in the right words but captcha=FAIL either way.

@davidspinks

I too detest illegibility of most captcha and actually took it off one of my sites as it was geared towards less than techies and it took more time to respond to real complaints that to remove the bots.

Also got a laugh when I clicked to sign in with my Disqus account here was my view: http://www.twitpic.com/c9j3q

Scott, as always great content keep it coming.

Thank you!! You've expressed my sentiments exactly! Can't tell you how many times I've sat in front of my screen with my head tilted sideways trying to figure out the garbledeegook it's asking me to type. I get that we're trying to prevent robots, but gosh, I almost think I NEED to be some high-tech computerized robot to decipher the text! :-)

--Allison

Mate - wtf! exactly! I have cursed these things for so long now! I've tried the little wheelchair mania man who speaks gobbledegook. Tried highlighting to see them better. Tried copy and paste to see if I can translate, etc. If there's one thing that can bring me to cursing out loud vehemently its captchas!!! Takes every last thread of peace to find the patience to get through! FB even has them when all you want to do is reply to a comment on a friend's wall! They just bring me to tears!

CAPTCHAS have long ceased being a useful form of filtering, at least since they've been able to either decode them automatically faster than a human, or crowdsource the deciphering to a low-paid human. Some of the nastier Facebook viruses do the latter.

At this point, we either escalate to higher-level test, like logic puzzles, or we give up and try and stop spammers/scammers via an alternate method.

Either option is preferable. The former is a great option, as the programmers trying to defeat the new CAPTCHAS might lead to some awesome developments in machine intelligence.

Know what else are hard to read? Comments with orange lines through them.

Yep, just learnin everything here, will be putting a background behind comments, thanks for the insight

Marvelous rant, man, and dead on. Also great title for the post.

Thanks :-) the title is what came to me first

Good captcha rant! You're so right!

Great video and true but what about offering up a solution or several?

Outside of don't use them, there isn't much I can say.

Well said Scott seems like we see eye to eye. The objective I think would be to simply make it as easy and secure for your subscriber or customer.I know I lost interest in some of those opt-in *&^%$

Oh my god, just this morning I was retained the borders by captcha, and for the first time, couldn't make my way through. I thought for sure it was all me; bad eyesight or degrading moral character. Thank you for clarifying where the insanity is...Diane

I totally agree, Scott, and I'm glad I'm not alone with this. I took the captcha function off of my sites because they are often so unreadable. The last captcha I came across seriously made me wonder if I needed to go to the eye doctor! About the deranged bat symbol thing... wonder how long it will be before our computers are able to capture how deranged we are based on what and how we type what we do... A slow, cautious typist vs jerky, slam-the-keys typist.... What does that say about our mental state? LOL. Thanks for the giggle.

I had this issue yesterday. Not only were they expecting me to read and write Klingon, they were suspicious of a blank character space after my name. I guess they suspected maybe I was Romulan. They then refused my choice of password. No Romulan password moron's allowed. Once I got that straight, I had to enter a new Craptcha .... Arrrrgh!

I thought I was the only one that hates those things! Thanks for the opportunity to rant about this! I feel better already as I envision a better system than that!

I totally agree. But since google feedburner gives my email subscribers a hard time signing up my daily post by email, what other choices we have to by pass those annoying captcha? I really need a solution. thanks.

Scott, You're hysterical. I love you. :)

Captcha's seem to have gotten worse. I know I have found several sites that I simply was unable to sign up for. After about 5 attempts I simply give up and go on my way. I like DISQUS on my blog so far. Still small so spam isn't an issue yet. Maybe they should post the Captcha like normal but put in the instructions - Don't fill anything out. Then bots would get eliminated by filling something out and people who read directions would get in :) I signed up for your Viddler feed using Google Reader with no Captcha's required. Woohooo

Signs that the world is being runned by computers....AAGGHHHH. Great vid man. I have it on my site too, and I hope its legible. Let me know if its not.

I think the first captcha was "cialis" and, apparently, you weren't ready for it so the computer continued to screw with you...

This comment has so much win in it, I don't even know how to reply. Well played Woodruff

Yes yes yes. I'm not sure why now, but there was a day when I was setting up several new Google accounts for a client (I suppose for 2 different sites) plus a bunch of test Blogger sites to work on an import from Typepad to Blogger (yeah...). By the end of the day, I was ready to cry every time I got one of these CAPTCHAs.

I'm dyslexic and it's a horrible problem for CAPTCHAs. I do fine with most words, but unfamiliar letter combos stymie me and require a lot of mental engagement--especially Google's crazy, illegible ones. I'm not entirely against CAPTCHA but, as a dyslexic person, I prefer the ones which are a real word or two and not all mashed and twisted.

This was a great post. It's so true that captcha's are crap, with most of them completely undecipherable. It typically takes me 4 or 5 refreshes every time I use one, and if I'm short on time, I simply leave that website. So much for "friendly" sign-ups. Those days are gone, thanks to all the spammers. Makes me seriously reconsider the use of captchas on my own website feeds...

I absolutely agree with you but I have to say, I cannot stop laughing! I was having a bad day but watching your video and listening to your commentary, actually lifted my day. Thanks. But on a serious note, this is unbelievable - you were having trouble and your a young guy...what about those of us with bad eyesite.. I couldn't make out half of the words and don't know where to go to learn Klingon... thanks for the post.

Yeah, Captcha, Not fun at all, but on sites that size they must get some serious spam without it. Still I reckon the captchas could be a lot more human/user friendly like you say Scott. The best thing of course would be to remove all the bots and automated scripts that are the root cause, yeah, like thats going to happen.

Have you seen the captchas with audio? I tried one once. Never again.

I believe that Google is determined to find a way to make a captcha that even they can't figure out.I have to usually go through about 3 pages inputting captchas that are incorrect, and one time I even tried clicking the little handy cap symbol where i thought that they would speak it out to you; and I got gibberish from 8 different people in like 10 languages.

I have a big problem b/c I'm colorblind on certain colors so I really seriously can't read some of them and am totally f-d if one of those colorish ones comes up. Did you see the ones w/ audio too, I can't understand them either!

Has anyone actually *proven* with *real numbers* that this keeps out bots? Cause I just think it's a way to make people *feel* like they are doing something about their spam/bot frustration, w/o any actual results.

I have probs with lighter colours if the background isn't dark. Highlighting helps heaps. Just thought it may help you a bit too.

There's another issue I didn't think about! Color blindness. Oye!

Also, it did greatly cut down on bot spam attacks on an old form of mine, but that could also be done with a simple captcha that doesn't blur the letters or use klingon speak

I LOVE you for blogging about this. Klingon, yes I believe that is what it is! And the Rorschach inkblot test - only crazy people get to sign up. Consider it a compliment to your sanity that you weren't able to receive their newsletter. What's your take on having to sign in to post a comment on a blog?

I think having a sign-in option, like the one here with Disqus is good, but not making it mandatory. Don't make people jump through hoops to engage with you on your blog

One of my pet hates, I find the recaptchas are a bit easier but the Google ones especially have got less and less legible.