I’ve modified this weblog software to make comment submitters solve captchas (in this case, distorted images of 6-letter words) to prove that they are human. I also log both the attempted answer and whether the submission attempt succeeded. I looked at the logs for the last week, and all the answers that _were_ 6-letters words were correct. About 100x as many, though, were not 6-letter words at all. Some sample answers:
“CASH ADVANCE”, “PAYDAY LOAN”, “TEXAS HOLDEM WINNING HANDS”, “BUYING VIAGRA ALTERNATIVE”, “THROAT POKERS ONLINE”, “BUNNY POKER BONUS”, “FREE ONLINE POKER CHIPS”, “CASINO POKER”, “LOTTO”, “EIGHT OR BETTER STUD POKER TOURNAMENTS”.
Nice tries, but unfortunately not entirely correct. What this must mean, though, is that someone out there is running form-filling software that parses the form and stuffs a default string into all available slots that the form offers, even when (as with my test answer slot) it’s not found on anyone else’s installation…
Tim Converse 