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iOS 16 will let you skip CAPTCHAs on some websites
iOS 16 will help you skip CAPTCHAs on apps and websites by automatically verifying your credentials.
Google's reCAPTCHA can tell you're not a bot from your phone
Google's reCAPTCHA has evolved from distorted text, to street numbers, to "I'm not a robot" tickboxes and, most recently, to their new invisible system. And now the company is bringing its bot-fighting program to Android.
Google now lets you prove your humanity with a single click
There's something just a little insulting about having to prove your humanity to some website by pecking out some distorted words, but Google's rolling out a new, less tedious way for web developers to tell if you've got blood or oil pumping through your veins. All you'll have to do is tick a box on a desktop site or match related images on your phone et voila -- you're in. Most of the time, anyway.
Google's latest Street View algorithm beats its bot-sniffing security system
You know how Google's been doing such a great job associating addresses with their locations on a map? Apparently, it's all thanks to the company's new magical algorithm that can parse (with 90 percent accuracy) even fuzzy numbers in pictures taken by Street View vehicles. In fact, the technology's so good that it managed to read even those headache-inducing swirly reCAPTCHA images 99 percent of the time during the company's tests. While that proves that the system works really well, it also implies that the distorted Rorschach-like puzzles are not a fool-proof indicator of whether a user is human.
iTrace offers kid-friendly stroke-ordered handwriting tutorial
Last week, the TUAW back room got into an incredibly extended debate regarding the merits of iTrace (US$3.99), a kid-centric app that teaches kids basic letter-writing skills. In the end, I pinged the developer and requested a promo code to give the app a try. I'm glad I did, because even though the app centers around finger-drawing, it offers a good learning tool for new writers. Dotted animations guide the student through each stroke, enabling them to learn to shape each letter. The app is brightly illustrated and well designed, certain to appeal to young students. Meant for the core 3-7 age group, kids can learn to trace uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as numbers. A series of adult-targeted settings are hidden behind a math-based CAPTCHA system (although I suppose in this case, CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) should really be CAPTKAA (distinguishing Kids and Adults). There, you can choose between left-handed and right-handed drawing, optional letter customization (although not the two-strokes-down "v" that I grew up using -- iTrace only does down then up), control background music and sound effects, and reach an adults-only tutorial that explains the app in more detail. The app was built for educational environments. It automatically tracks each user, so parents and teachers can view milestones; see daily, weekly, and monthly usage; and see how much effort each child is investing. The interface is easy to understand, use and fun to play with. Although the $4 price tag may strike some as premium, I found the app well worth the cost. If you're an early education teacher or a parent to young children, I think you'll find this a good tutorial. I do, however, suggest that children try using a stylus while playing with the app instead of using it exclusively with fingers. A developer-supplied promo video follows below:
RIM patent uses motion, CAPTCHAs to stop texting while driving, shows a fine appreciation of irony
More and more people understand that texting while driving is a bad idea, but RIM has just been granted a patent that would have smartphones step in before things get out of hand. Going beyond just filtering inbound messages like some motion-based lockdown apps, the BlackBerry maker's invention also turns off the creation of any outbound messages as long as the phone is moving within a given speed range. The override for the lock is the dictionary definition of ironic, however: the technique makes owners type out the answer to a CAPTCHA challenge onscreen, encouraging the very problem it's meant to stop. As much as we could still see the hassle being enough to deter some messaging-addicted drivers, we have a hunch that the miniscule hurdle is a primary reason why the 2009-era patent hasn't found its way into a shipping BlackBerry. Maybe RIM should have chronic texters solve a Rubik's Cube instead.
PlayThru hopes to kill text captchas with game-based authentication
At their worst, captchas are impossible to decipher; at their best, they're... fun? A startup called Are You a Human has developed PlayThru, an alternative to text-based authentication. Instead of requiring the user to type some blurry, nonsensical word, PlayThru has them play a mini-game, such as dragging and dropping a car into an open parking spot. The startup says this method is more secure than word captchas -- since automated bots have a harder time solving these image-based puzzles -- and more fun, because users generally have a better time when their ability to identify letters isn't called into question. PlayThru has been in beta for several months and is currently available as a free download. On May 21st, the solution will officially launch on both PCs and smartphones. Click through to the source link to try out the captcha alternative for yourself.
Google reCAPTCHAs now featuring Street View addresses, 221b Baker St. to get even more famous
If you've enjoyed decrypting the often frustratingly skewed (and occasionally humorously juxtaposed) reCAPTCHAs, you might be a bit sad to learn that Google is mixing things up with some rather more boring numerals. The combinations of two words are typically used as part of a registration form to ensure the registrant is, indeed, human. Google is now replacing one of the words in some of its reCAPTCHA forms with photos gleaned from Street View service. Google says it uses these numbers internally to improve the accuracy of Street View and that pulling them into reCAPTCHAs is part of an "experiment" to "determine if using imagery might also be an effective way to further refine our tools for fighting machine and bot-related abuse online."In other words, Google's bots are already capable of decoding these numbers, which makes this all sound like a bit of a challenge to the rest of the OCR-loving coders in the world. Any takers?[Image Credit: dirtbag]
Stanford program cracks text-based CAPTCHAs, shelters the replicants among us
CAPTCHAs. In the absence of a Voigt-Kampff apparatus, they're what separate the humans from the only-posing-to-be-human. And now three Stanford researchers have further blurred that line with Decaptcha, a program that uses image processing, segmentation and a spell-checker to defeat text-based CAPTCHAs. Elie Bursztien, Matthieu Martin and John Mitchell pitted Decaptcha against a number of sites: it passed 66% of the challenges on Visa's Authorize.net and 70% at Blizzard Entertainment. At the high end, the program beat 93% of MegaUpload's tests; at other end, it only bested 2% of those from Skyrock. Of the 15 sites tried, only two completely repelled Decaptcha's onslaught -- Google and reCaptcha. So what did the researchers learn from this? Randomization makes for better security; random lengths and character sizes tended to thwart Decaptcha, as did waving text. How long that will remain true is anyone's guess, as presumably SkyNet is working on a CAPTCHA-killer of its own.
D-Link routers get added CAPTCHA protection
D-Link has been known to roll out some fairly significant firmware updates for its routers in the past, and while this latest won't exactly breath new life into your old clunker, it does at least break a tiny bit of new ground in its own little way. While the company is obviously quick to point out that its routers are already some of the most secure around, it apparently thought they could still do with a bit of added protection, so it's now added some annoying but reliable CAPTCHA tests to a number of its existing models. That includes the DIR-615, DIR-625, DIR-628, DIR-655, DIR-825, DIR-855, DIR-685, and DGL-4500, which can each be upgraded with the new firmware that's now freely available on D-Link's website, and will no doubt become standard issue on all future D-Link routers.[Via Engadget Spanish]
