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Rant: Anyone else dislike those “enter the letters you see below” confirmation pages?

Ok, you guys know I try to at least stay on topic with respect to systems administration… but this time, as a systems administrator, I have to just share my complete frustration with a technology in use these days entirely to much, in my opinion.

That technology is the use of the automated images that are shown on pages that you have to enter the text shown in the image. I can never get them right the first time, but this one takes the cake!

 This has simply got to be the WORST one I have ever seen! I mean, I see gsp there– but what are those other letters? tun? tia? tian?tim? lun? I gave up.

Most sites do this so that scripters will not be able to write scripts that automatically post comments to discussion boards, like spam e-mails, with no real person actually doing the posting. It’s supposed to “verify your humanity”– however, you’ll have to take my word for it– I am human! If your reading this and you own a  site that does this to us or are considering it– please find a better way to protect us from the spam bots!

 Some other ways they do this is with multi colored text. And while I’m not color blind, they generally do it with reds, greens, and blues– three colors that are hard to see if you are color blind.

All this trouble simply because some yahoo thinks he’s going to get rich by posting comments and sending e-mails about prescription drugs, a stock tip, or some other stuff. (We’ve all seen them, so I don’t have to go into detail here. Thankfully.)

At any rate, thank you for listening… back to your regularly scheduled systems administration duties. If get a chance post a comment with your favorite experiences with this frustration, I’m sure we’d all love to read them!