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Comment by julesbravo | Hacker News Reader

This is despicable. People have CATCHAs to keep you idiots out, can't you respect this?

We probably shouldn't talk about viruses or security flaws, either -- might give someone the idea that it's ok to break into a machine. We ought to respect it by not discussing such things.

"We probably shouldn't talk about viruses or security flaws, either -- might give someone the idea that it's ok to break into a machine. We ought to respect it by not discussing such things."

I interpreted the OP to be more disgusted at someone making a business out of actively circumventing a control then we discussing that it exists.

That is a bit different than discussing the existence of flaws. In this case it's making money off actively exploiting the flaws.

This sort of thing is inevitable whenever you have a flawed system which incentivizes this type of activity. If anything it only raises awareness to how we should stop using captchas because they simply don't work.

That's like saying 'guns don't work because sometimes when you shoot someone they survive.' Guns and captchas work, you just don't like being shoot at, or having to guess at obfuscated letters.

captchas also keep out some legitimate users[1]. I have to screenshare/visit my father fairly often because he runs into trouble deciphering non-recaptcha captchas for the most part (he's low vision with some other vision problems). The only saving grace of recaptcha and a very select few alternatives (google comes to mind) is the audio captcha he can at least listen to.

I would gladly consider working on a browser extension that implements this service for his sake. It's a double edged sword, and really, if your spam prevention relies heavily on captchas, it's not feasible in the long term anyway. This is not the first or last or cheapest service to break them.

I haven't even gotten started on my own personal gripes about captcha abuses. Top on my list right now is one I'm going to encounter again on my flight later today: gogo inflight wifi asking me to fill out a captcha after payment...on wifi on a plane 35000 feet up in the air in the middle of California. Talk about pointless.

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/ lists some interesting alternatives to captchas that may work for lower traffic sites.

Have you seen http://www.webvisum.com/? It's a Firefox addon that sends CAPTCHAs for remote solving. I haven't tried it because registration requires human approval.

that's what i said to my flu virus!

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