Captcha: What does it mean and how can we make it less irritating?
Everyone has to deal with it from time to time, and almost everyone gets irritated by it: Captcha. But what does Captcha mean? Why are we bothered with it? Couldn't it be a lot easier, for when I have no idea what road signs are, for example?
It still feels weird: you have to prove that you are not a robot - to a computer... We don't ask the computer to prove it's not human, do we? Still, for people who have a website with, for example, a contact form that can be filled out, it is very nice that all bots are filtered out. Bots are not people, but computer programs that can automatically cause a lot of spam.
What does Captcha mean?
Captcha is an abbreviation and stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Thus, it is a test that ensures that only humans can proceed to the destination of the button to which the test is applied. Very well known, for example, are Captchas with strings of letters and/or numbers, where the characters are distorted, have different colors and have characters in the background. Another well-known example is that of a picture divided into different boxes, where you are asked to click all the boxes with a traffic light or a car, for example.
Irritating!
But the "Ca" of Captcha means Completely Automated, right? If you have to take such an irritating test yourself - which you also regularly fail and then have to do again - why do these robots pretend it is completely automatic? So this seems to be purely based on the fact that no human intervention is needed for authorization. This is therefore done 'automatically' ... So at The Dare Company, we think this is definitely not automatic enough!
Is there a better alternative to Captcha?
We hear more and more complaints about Captcha - especially ReCaptcha, Google's test. It is said to crash too often or not work at all. Since we always think from the user experience when developing websites, we don't think it's ideal to start harassing the well-intentioned customer who would like to subscribe to a newsletter or contact us with difficult questions like: Are you a robot or not? That's why we like to use a replacement for Captcha, which is just as effective, but doesn't ask difficult questions! The program itself knows whether the person visiting the website has been there before, and if not, it just loads a box to be checked. And done! No spam and no irritation.