I couldn't agree more, and it seems to be on the rise. I used to get once a week maybe, like for a new signup to a forum. Fine, understandable. Now I get them multiple times per day.

It used to be a minor annoyance and I understood the reason for them in those cases. Now they've moved way beyond the 'pain threshold' and it's moved on to a blind hatred of them for me.

A similar thing happened for ads.. At first they were OK and I was fine with some ads paying for a sites. Then they became more intrusive flash crap. I started getting annoyed. Then all the tracking came in and full-page motion and sound ads and they really started abusing their privileges. Now I hate them so much I will never turn off my adblocker again for any site. They've just overstayed their welcome too much.

The same thing is happening now with captchas. Started as a good cause, but totally took advantage of the users to solve a problem that's just as well solved on the back end in most cases.

Don't worry, the next iteration of CAPTCHAs will rely heavily on browser feature detection, ensuring that you're not using an unauthorized version of Chrome that can be automated. Only authorized and trusted browsers will pass the tests.

If it should have been destroyed what is the reason you think it hasn't been? People aren't adding captchas to websites for fun, it is clearly solving a problem for them. So what do you propose instead?