How CAPTCHA Works?
CAPTCHAs are the little puzzles that we have all had to get through at some point to access a website. CAPTCHA, an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a test that distinguishes between human users and bots. It prevents malicious software from entering domains and harming digital assets. You must have encountered a few types of brainteasers, some work on text, number or image recognition, and others on simple checkboxes and general user behaviour assessment. The success of CAPTCHA lies in its simplicity. The straightforward tests that a human can surpass easily can pose great difficulty for a computer.
In 2007, Google introduced a free and advanced service called reCAPTCHA as a substitute for the traditional CAPTCHAs. This service requires users to recognise and enter texts or images. Audio evaluation also exists to serve visually impaired patrons better and use distorted voices and background noise to deter voice recognition programs.
Invisible reCAPTCHA came as an innovation. The checkbox assessment that asks you to affirm that “I’m not a robot” works on the principle of movement of the user’s cursor, all human motions have some randomness which bots lack. Some invisible tests can work even without interacting with users by simply assessing behaviour and past interactions with internet content.
CAPTCHA acts as a proactive defence against malware, it gets triggered when user behaviour tends towards that of a bot. Keystrokes, hyperlink clicks, and time between clicks can all act as triggers, but they do not assure complete safety from bots. Several programs that can bypass the shield within moments already exist along with large-scale human fraud farms that assist malware. It can also lead to poor user experience and blockage of good traffic, ultimately resulting in economic loss for online platforms. CAPTCHA alone is inefficient as it does not ensure total security, alternatives like Cloudflare Bot Management and Super Bot Flight Mode are better capable of identifying and barring bad bots without affecting user experience.
Nevertheless, CAPTCHA remains a popular tool for detecting and blocking malicious bots.
Source of the template: https://www.boringbusinessnerd.com/post/captcha-more-art-than-science
About the author,
Arisha Ali Rahi
A girl who loves writing, whether it be fiction or not. An introvert who floats away in her imaginary world. Navigating her writing journey by leveraging her experience as an academic subject matter expert.
