Captchas suck and are really hard to spell
Tue, Jul 10, 2007
Captchas suck. I really don’t think anyone is going to disagree with me here. They suck because they attempt to stop spam bots at the cost of the end user’s experience. How many times have you entered a captcha only to have an error returned because the image presented to you is incomprehensible not only to spam bots, but also to the user?
Surely there must be a better way of differentiating a humans from spam bots with minimal impact to usability. It just so happens that I think I may well have stumbled upon a pretty simple solution which should prove far less prone to user error and still remain effective at preventing automated spam bots from passing as humans. The idea is pretty simple. Instead of relying on a user to comprehend a randomised string embedded in an image, we instead ask the user to do something they’re pretty good at already: clicking. Far less prone to user error but just as effective. Here’s some quickly stitched together mockups (I’ll replace these with nifty JavaScript ones as soon as time allows):
Click the numbers in order 1-4.
Join the dots!
There are many ways of implementing this. The key is using JavaScript to detect mouse clicks on specific portions of the Clickcha and then having the server interpret these clicks to determine if they’re correct.
Edit: It would appear that I’m slightly lysdexic and have a hard time spelling Captcha!
Tags: Usability
July 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
How would it work for non-mouse users, and perhaps vision impaired users?
July 11th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
@Lar
I’ve given very little thought to this, probably because it’s one of those things which is rarely on any developer’s radar, unfortunately. Vision impaired users should still be able to access the content of a clickpas through a screenreader in the case of the first example because the rendering of the numbers would browser based (i.e. not an image like a captcha). This would also mean that the clickpass could be scaled in accordance to a user’s browser settings, just like text.
As for users who don’t use a mouse, well, such people would be quite rare. Of the two motor impaired internet users I’ve met, both of them user a mouse type input device in some fashion.
Clickpasses may not be the perfect solution to replacing captchas, but they should, I feel, be as accessible (probably more so) to to visual/motor impaired users than captchas ever will be.
I’d be keen to hear any more of your thoughts. I’ve also fixed that rather embarrassing spelling error which is another tell tale sign that I may be mildly dyslexic.
July 14th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Interesting. I’ve come across a few Captcha alternatives recently. One I’ll probably implement on one of my own sites this weekend is right here. So simple, so effective.
Long term, I like the sound of Askimet. The best Captcha is no Captcha at all, right? It’s like outsourcing your spam. Haven’t tried it yet, though.
And then there’s the Captcha that everyone loves spending time on: Hotcaptcha!
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I take back what I said about the CSS method of stopping comment spam (first link in my previous comment). I tried it and it sucked. A lot. I’ve been dealing with more spam than ever. So, you know, skip that one.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
This is brilliant! Have you not thought of ways to code this?! If not, I shall be your first developer on it!
October 28th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I must be visionary impair with the Hotcaptcha, because I got it wrong… ALL OF IT!
Anyhow, I find this a great alternative to Captcha or Saptcha… especially Hotcaptcha.
I am going to try to develop this baby and if you want, you can be the first to have what I develop. (I don’t think I will be publicly releasing it.)
I Look forward you what you have to say.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:41 am
What about people with JS disabled? We’re a minority, but a smart one and I would like to be catered to.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 am
how about absolutely no more hoops for users to jump through at all? : http://akismet.com/
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Since writing this I’ve come to the same conclusion as you James - any method which requires someone to behave like a computer in order to prevent being seen as a computer is a really terrible idea. Akismet works extremely well and is pretty much the only solution I’d vouch for.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Sounds like a damn good idea. I, for one, am sick of captchas. Sometimes, even when I know I’ve entered the correct text, I am still rejected. A clickpass would be far less inconvenient than those damn captchas!