Augury

In order to prove that you are a human, please type in the letters that appear in the following image:

Did you type “673HT0″? Sorry then, you are not human.

If you’re like me, you’ve encountered this sort of test before, but usually find them easy. Recently my luck has changed and I’m finding lots of these things everywhere and they’re becoming a real thorn in my side. The above test was found at The Escapist when I was attempting to publish a comment there. I tried two different combinations and then gave up on it.

I never knew these sorts of image tests had a name but apparently they are called CAPTCHAs. Perhaps I’m just running into these things more frequently now that I have begun to read Digg.com regularly. Here is a CAPTCHA from Digg:

If you typed “FVJDe” then you are not human. The answer to this one is simple, “FVjDe.” I tried to find a harder one but none came up after I reloaded the page half a dozen times. Still, the letter form doesn’t make it totally clear that the J is supposed to be lowercase.

I have a theory that the difficulty of the CAPTCHA is proportional to the length of your remarks — If you are writing a short comment then the CAPTCHA will be easy. If you spent an hour writing a lengthy reply then the CAPTCHA will be extremely ambiguous. You will click “Post Comment” and then a page will load indicating to you that you have filled out the form incorrectly and redirect you back to the comment page. Helpfully, most webpages that implement this feature will usually erase everything you’ve written, allowing you to type not only the CAPTCHA all over again, but also your entire comment.