Can we please kill the Captcha

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Right I’ve had enough. Captcha codes are now officially the most irritating thing I’ve ever encountered, and this is from a man who grew up with a little sister.

Captcha codes, for anybody not au fait with this peculiar torment, are the codes you have to enter to add comments to blogs or download things, or pretty much do any of the hundred little tasks that make the internet worthwhile. If you’re particularly keen to see one, it’s the thing that will bug you before you post a comment on this here blog. They’re intended to stop bots from signing up for millions of email addresses and swamping the planet in a Viagra blizzard. Essentially, they’re the gatekeepers to the online world, and they’re bloody irritating.

At what point did Captcha’s lords and masters decide that making them completely indecipherable was the way forward? If anything, Captchas have made me side with the bots. We have a common enemy, and if a bot can read the squiggles and inkblots that make up a modern Captcha code, then good for them. It deserves the email account. I’ll throw it a parade. Personally, I can’t even begin to comprehend the damn things. Captcha codes are long past telling humans from bots, they’re now only useful for judging the psychological state of the person entering the comment.

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