addendum: A CAPTCHA is like one of those ‘club’ things you can put on your steering wheel.. Sure, even an idiot can circumvent it, but given the choice of a car with one and a car without, a thief will go for the car without. If you add a CAPTCHA to your blog, then a spammer has to decide whether it is worth the effort to crack it. It is with Gmail, but ye yolkle forum with a CAPTCHA is likely to fair better, especially when their are SOOO many others without one.

“but the point is that instead of just a stupid bot, now you have a bot and a human being working in unison.”

It’s a concern, but a mechanical Turk will always have a cost overhead that a pure bot won’t be subject to. It needs enough to feed itself. So, there is definitely a limit on which targets can be attacked.

I just think that bloggers will always stay one step ahead of spammers, and its obvious that we will because spammers are always looking out for the old systems, and are TRYING to catch up with our current ones… Captchas have been around for HOW long? They are just now being able to get a rough solve on a few SIMPLE ones?

Its not really about all bloggers getting together to find the perfect solution… its about all bloggers figuring out their OWN way making it virtually impossible for a bot to bot them all.

Humans will always be able to help the bot but honestly in the time it takes for them to work with a bot… they can use an auto completer and just fill out the captchas themselfs.

@Travis – but the point is that instead of just a stupid bot, now you have a bot and a human being working in unison. The human passes the test by not filling out the right field, and the bot injects the payload.

You can block the IP, and it will probably work on a smaller scale, but then they might proxy their requests through a large botnet and having each one come from a different IP.

But yeah, small blogs have the advantage of not being large targets. But if you are indexed by Google or other search engines, then the bots can find you via random searches.

I am kinda missing the teli-marketers :(

Really though, I think bloggers will always be one step a head of spammers (the bloggers that need the protection at least) captchas are really now only becomming an issue in Browser Based Games and Social Networking Sites due to their vounrablility to bots…
Simple methods of avoiding spam on any joe blow blog will work because to be honest… not enough people care that travismccrea.com even exists for them to bother with it.

And they know if they develop spam ware for a certain website in particular they are going to get IP blocked and their time was useless… spammers more key in on fully non protected blogs.

Really, if it becomes an issue… just use a honeypot with the blank field (thats what I was using for the longest time) which will change the titles from Name Mail URL and Body to 342938479283749823794872394 d0350we989287439879243784 3490872948792384792387498 and 219834923857984732987239dfd3893 and then one extra one to throw the bot off because if it fills it out it will be sent back (it would be hidden in a “display: none;” what I also did for screen readers is put FFF text saying “this is a blank feild for spammers, please do not fill anything in it”

@Nick – LOL good one! I saw it before, but it’s still funny!

@astine – oh no! What have I done! I created a monster!

So you buy one of these apps, then purchase a big ass package with ImageToText you can start building your brand new spam empire. All it takes is some cash – you can even be borderline retarded. It won’t slow you down.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Soon my plan will be complete! Spam in every inbox, every comment log, inline of every blog! Soon everyone will be so pissed off at all the spam that they will simply log off of the Internet. Then, THEN, I will be the only person left online, leaving me free to do as I always wanted! Soon, my blog will have the most DIGGS!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!1!!!!11!!1!!!1!!!!1111!

That, or the anti-spam questions serve a dual purpose, keeping both bots and idiots off of my internets… ask a complex question, only smart people know the answer, everybody wins.

People are on it as we, uh, post. Stupid Filter

[quote comment=”9500″]I hate to be a jerk, (No, wait. I love that. Never mind.) but it’s not “touring test.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test%5B/quote%5D

:ops: Oops! Damn spellcheck! I fixed it now. Thanks!

[quote comment=”9501″]That, or the anti-spam questions serve a dual purpose, keeping both bots and idiots off of my internets… ask a complex question, only smart people know the answer, everybody wins.[/quote]

This would mean that MySpace would go out of business as 90% of their user base would find themselves locked out. :P Which, is not such a band thing actually.

Here’s hoping the arms race eventually develops a true AI :mrgreen:

That, or the anti-spam questions serve a dual purpose, keeping both bots and idiots off of my internets… ask a complex question, only smart people know the answer, everybody wins.