Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management

Korea Data Strategy Society (한국데이터전략학회)
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Evaluation of CAPTCHA Efficiency

  • Received : 2015.06.24
  • Accepted : 2015.09.13
  • Published : 2015.09.30
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Abstract

We propose statistical methods for evaluating the efficiency of CAPTCHA. Most people unfairly assumed that machines are not capable at reading precisely. This fact leads to the invention of CAPTCHA, a distorted word or short phase, which is designed to thwart computers and separate human from machines. However, advances in image recognition technologies mean that machines are constantly getting better at recognizing CAPTCHA. This forces CAPTCHA designers to design even more difficult CAPTCHAs to prevent their systems from being gamed by malicious bots. However, this arm race has an unintended side effect on the common users. Many CAPTCHAs are now so hard that many people are unable to read them. This obviously conflicts with the original purpose that CAPTCHA was invented in the first place. Our analysis shows that some CAPTCHAs are more users friendly. In particular, Yahoo-style CAPTCHA is the most friendliness. This suggests that a good CAPTCHA could be a simple text with some distortion that prevents machines from correctly segmenting characters.

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References

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