Subject: [Asrg] captcha's the commercial reality bites...

From: Danny Angus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:50:00 +0100

Hi All,

Thought you may like to know (unless I'm the last one to cotton on!)
that a scenario we've theorised about for years is finally here.
I found the link below to a service that will decode captcha's for you
for $2 per success. It was in an add served me by gmail!

So to anyone who ever proposed a spam "solution" that relied on
differentiating between people and machines, and doubted us when we
told them that the commercial imperative would be its downfall.. We
told you so!

I predict much more of this, and I think it presages the end of the
useful life of the captcha.

http://www.decaptcher.com/client/

d.

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From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:40:52 +0200

> Thought you may like to know (unless I'm the last one to cotton on!)

Yeah, the same site was mentioned on Mon, 26 Oct 2009, in 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/asrg/current/msg15762.html

> for $2 per success. It was in an add served me by gmail!

Actually $2 for _1000_ successes, i.e. 0.002 USD per solved CAPTCHA.

A human --the H in captcha-- can solve 0.85 captchas per second, 
according to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zOirfX9CZc

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:31:57 -0600

> for $2 per success. It was in an add served me by gmail!

You're probably paying too much! :)

> useful life of the captcha.

As with everything economic, it depends on costs and benefits. If the
service you're running isn't worth the $2 a captcha cost of decoding,
then perhaps you're OK for now.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: "Chris Lewis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:30:41 -0400

> for $2 per success. It was in an add served me by gmail!

Suresh found sweatshops in India quoting some small number of rupees per 
thousand, claiming to be able to supply up to 250,000 per day.  At 
_least_ three years ago.

I think I saw a decaptcha-like site 3 or 4 years ago too.

Incidentally, some of the spam filter companies, as part of their 
technology for trying to figure out whether the jpeg is naughty or not, 
_claim_ they can solve >90% of all captchas on the fly.

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From: Steve Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:33:37 -0700

On Sep 17, 2010, at 5:30 PM, Chris Lewis wrote:

> Suresh found sweatshops in India quoting some small number of rupees per thousand, claiming to be able to supply up to 250,000 per day.  At _least_ three years ago.
> 
> Incidentally, some of the spam filter companies, as part of their technology for trying to figure out whether the jpeg is naughty or not, _claim_ they can solve >90% of all captchas on the fly.

There's even a neural net implemented in javascript as a greasemonkey plugin that'll solve some simple captchas in the browser.

Cheers,
  Steve

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From: David Nicol <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:11:27 -0500

"decaptchatate"