# Your viewpoint on Captcha "solver" software



## Damian (Feb 11, 2014)

We've had a recent rash of individuals running some kind of "GSA Captcha Solver" program. 

I can't really find any situation where they're particularly *illegal*, but it tends to poke me in the morality/ethics bone: captchas are in place to verify if you're a human, and if you're using automated software to subvert that expectation, then it seems like exceptional effort is being used to overcome the requirements of a website. Maybe even bordering on the concept of brute forcing?

What are your thoughts?


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## Nett (Feb 11, 2014)

Does it abuse CPU/RAM/IO?


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## willie (Feb 11, 2014)

More precisely, the purpose of captchas is (primarily) to slow down SPAM, so someone running captcha breaking software is presumptively a spammer.  I'd kick them.


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## Damian (Feb 11, 2014)

Net said:


> Does it abuse CPU/RAM/IO?


It does not.


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## drmike (Feb 11, 2014)

I hate CAPTCHA.   Half the time as a human I can't decipher the bullshit.

Ran into limits reached and flagged for CAPTCHA fails in the past.  Notably the crap Google/Gaggle owns.

Inevitably the creative will create machine learning algorithms to work around nearly anything.  It's a cat and mouse game.


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## Mun (Feb 11, 2014)

Captcha's do work wonders to tell you the truth. However, when they are built in and a known, then they tend to fail. There is better alternatives that work far better though.


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## vRozenSch00n (Feb 11, 2014)

Captcha is nice to combat spam, but whenever a new captcha pops up with every page change, then it really pisses me off.


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## blergh (Feb 11, 2014)

Afaik people get paid to manually solve them if the scripts cant. While possibly immoral or shady i don't see anything wrong with it.


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## xCubex (Feb 11, 2014)

vRozenSch00n said:


> Captcha is nice to combat spam, but whenever a new captcha pops up with every page change, then it really pisses me off.


Hahaha, i second that, espeically when you input something wrong into the signup page and then have to do it again, and its a killer combo of words and letters <_<


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## mikho (Feb 11, 2014)

wjunction uses it for new users when posting, after 5 posts the captcha is removed.


To a certain level I find captcha usable.


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## MCH-Phil (Feb 11, 2014)

Damian said:


> It does not.


Wait until they try to load up 256MB or my favorite was the guy using 128MB KVM's with windows server and run that crap constantly. CPU load out the *** 

I had one guy buy 50 256MB RAM VM for this purpose and then abuse the heck out of things. He charged back when I explained he couldn't rape the CPU in this manner.


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## tchen (Feb 11, 2014)

Kinda like running nmap isn't technically illegal, but there aren't any good reasons one would be doing so on a network you don't own.  The people running the Captcha solvers typically aren't the ones spamming - the underground/spam network is pretty specialized and tiered - so it always comes down to a sanitized "I'm not doing anything wrong".  Much like Silk Road wasn't doing anything wrong (until that last bit of stupidity by its owner), they're middlemen providing services.

It's really up to your own moral compass on whether you want to support this behavior.  But it is a slippery slope to follow through with, as you'll discover city-level geoip'd VPNs, washers, etc.  It's amazing how grey some people's moral fibers are.


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## GIANT_CRAB (Feb 12, 2014)

1) Block all colocrossing IP addresses

2) ?????

3) PROFIT


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## howardsl2 (Feb 12, 2014)

The Top 10 Worst Captchas...

http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/top-10-worst-captchas/


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## sv01 (Feb 12, 2014)

for data mining (get data from random website) sometimes captcha solver really usefull and make your job easier.

Yes, we're in grey area.


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