Re:$1.39 for 1000 decoded CAPTCHAs
by zorked on Friday April 22, 2011 @05:24PM
(#2475476)
Actually, I managed a reasonably large scale free email operation and spammers DO spend money solving captchas.
We had this issue with spammers where after sending 50 emails a day we would ask users to solve a captcha after each email sent. That didn't work.
Upon further investigation and adding some code to track keypresses, we discovered the reason: it had been humans all along, sending spam semi-manually from a cybercafe/sweatshop in Nigeria using an add-on like Roboform as an aid. And yes, these were the usual H3rb4l V14gr4 spammers as well as some Nigerian Princes.
While there is poverty, Captchas are necessarily broken.
We had this issue with spammers where after sending 50 emails a day we would ask users to solve a captcha after each email sent. That didn't work.
Upon further investigation and adding some code to track keypresses, we discovered the reason: it had been humans all along, sending spam semi-manually from a cybercafe/sweatshop in Nigeria using an add-on like Roboform as an aid. And yes, these were the usual H3rb4l V14gr4 spammers as well as some Nigerian Princes.
While there is poverty, Captchas are necessarily broken.