'Net Features : NuCaptcha

7 Innovative Solutions to CAPTCHA User Attention

Michael Garrity — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:35:00 GMT

Security is one of the most important factors that a webmaster or developer has to take into consideration when designing a website – especially one that handles sensitive user data and/or requires users to register before they can begin to interact with the site.

Among the many solutions that Web workers have devised to improve security measures, as well as the user experience on their sites, is the CAPTCHA (or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – I think it’s a good idea they decided to use the acronym), a solution that presents a challenge response test to users that ensures the “person” trying to access the site is actually a human, and not just an annoying spam bot.

Unfortunately, while these solutions can be useful in theory, they are often more problematic when they’re actually implemented. Not only can they be cumbersome, difficult to read and a generally unwanted hassle for users, but they’re not even foolproof, as bots can use optical character recognition (OCR) software to crack the CAPTCHA code.

As a result, developers have had to get creative with their CAPTCHAs, resulting in an improved experience for many users. Here are six of the more interesting, innovative and just plain useful CAPTCHA solutions available today:

reCAPTCHA

Although reCAPTCHA looks a lot like traditional CAPTCHA solutions (because it is), it’s also a service that helps digitize books, newspapers and even old radio shows. Basically, as reCAPTCHA goes about the process of putting this old content into a sleep new digital format, it will go through and find those words that are pretty much impossible for OCR programs to read, and then uses those for it’s CAPTCHAs, making it far more secure than other solutions.

Asirra

This is a Microsoft Research project adds a dash of cute to a website by asking users to identify photos of dogs for cats (e.g. they’ll be asked to identify all of the cat pictures in a set that mixes both cat and dog photos). It’s powered by a unique partnership with Petfinder.com, and according to their user studies, not only can people accomplish this task quickly and accurately, but a lot of them also think it is fun.

Confident Technologies

Another similar CAPTCHA solution is available from Confident Technologies, which provides clickable picture CAPTCHAs that stop spam and bots by asking visitors to click on specific pictures. This tool comes in various international languages (including French, Spanish, German and more), is already mobile-optimized and allows websites to brand their CAPTCHA using their own unique logos and marketing messages.

Ironclad CAPTCHA

Ironclad CAPTCHA is a solution from the Security Stronghold company that presents a set of 3D objects for users to count and identify. According to its website, the solution is “easy for even a kid, impossible for [a] robot.” A box will appear with a variety of 3D objects and ask users to count how many individual objects they see. And the best part is, it’s totally free!

PlayThru

If CAPTCHAs are driving away users, why not give them a game to play instead? At least, that’s the idea the folks at Are You a Human had when they created PlayThru, a cloud-based service that provides little interactive minigames with simple tasks (e.g. drag the food items into the refrigerator) that users must complete before they can move to another part of a website.

NuCAPTCHA

NuCAPTCHA takes a new approach to CAPTCHA security by using videos that feature easy-to-read streaming letters, as opposed to a traditional static box. It’s also much less of a hassle for developers to integrate into their sites and can be customized in a skinless form that lets designers match it to the them of their websites.

Solve Media

Advertising is everywhere these days, and now it’s even in our CAPTCHAs thanks to Solve Media, which has created a CATPCHA and display ad hybrid that asks users to answer a simple question about an ad that it shows them from another company. Advertisers pay for these appearances, and publishers will share half of their ad revenue with Solve. In other words, this is a solution that allows you to monetize your CAPTCHAs and keep spam bots away at the same time.

Can Nu Campaign Fix Captcha?

Michael Garrity — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:00:00 GMT

NuCaptcha Inc., the "Human-Friendly" Captcha, is urging users to "Make the Switch" with their new campaign.

While the implementation of Captchas has certainly been a good thing for website users and owners looking for both security online and a way to reduce or eliminate spam, its flaws can, at times, be very apparent.

In most cases, Captchas pose little to no problems, unless you're a bot. However, there are several instances when Captchas prove to be more of a hindrance than a help, whether it is because of a design issue or a user-related one. For example, a user with eyesight issues may have trouble making out the letters on a Captcha, and without help this could force them to abandon the task at hand; this could be problematic if he or she were trying to do time-sensitive online banking or bill paying.

More common, however, are problems that arise from poorly designed or difficult Captchas that can be tiring for any user to try to decipher. Just look at this list of the "top 10 worst Captcha's [sic] ever."

Complicated or confusing Captchas are an extremely easy way to drive users away from your site and drastically diminish conversion, so unless that is your business model (for some reason), you'd probably be better off trying to keep things as simple as possible.

This is the goal of NuCaptcha, company whose platform delivers a fast and easy way to complete a Captcha and also provides high website security. The whole idea behind the product is a simple Captcha interface that is specifically designed to retain users on a site and help them to quickly and efficiently pass through security.

Just last week, NuCaptcha announced their "Make the Switch" campaign in an attempt to attract website owners and, so they claim, put an end to Captcha-related frustrations on the part of the site's users. The company's endeavors are going to be aimed at site owners and webmasters looking for a user-friendly alternative to traditional Captcha platforms.

NuCaptcha's cutting-edge Captcha technology requires users to type in as little as 3 letters and can typically be completed in under 3 seconds.

The platform will enable websites of all sizes to choose their Captcha security and user-experience, which before was only possible for the highest-volume Captcha sites. They offer a variety of video-based templates that can be selected by owners to fit their look and feel of their individual website thanks to a new custom skinning technology (which is not as gross as it sounds). Owners are also able to control as many or as few details as they choose, such as size, choice of videos, security level and even optional branding, advertising and revenue production through NuCaptcha's advertising partners.

Website owners, particularly those who are on a tight budget but who want to utilize the security features that come with a Captcha platform, may want to start thinking about looking into a product like this. NuCaptcha offers a variety of choices for owners, such as their Free, Pro and Enterprise models, which all utilize the same usability and security features.

Captcha Advertising Covers All the Bases

Linc Wonham — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:41:00 GMT

An innovative young company out of Vancouver, B.C., has developed a product aimed squarely at two of the most important issues for any Web professional: security and advertising.

We wrote about NuCaptcha a few months ago when it introduced video to the security captcha market. Until then, captchas were mostly known as the odd-looking word puzzles designed to prevent non-human visitors from penetrating your website. The boxes of blurred letters and numbers proved to be more annoying to some users than they were secure for website owners, but NuCaptcha’s new video technology has made great strides to improve both usability and effectiveness.

Video technology makes for more secure captchas than static letters and numbers do, and the platform has already been adopted by more than 3,500 websites since its launch in June.

Now with the release of NuCaptcha Engage, Web publishers can monetize their security videos with advertising. The process remains the same, with a video appearing on the landing page of a website and prompting the user to identify certain colored letters contained within a message that scrolls across the bottom of the screen. The moving letters or numbers provide the heightened security as with the previous iteration, but now the messages and the videos can be provided to the publisher by paid advertisers.

Advertisers and publishers negotiate their own terms of the deal, and NuCaptcha’s pricing is either on a video CPM basis ($10 to $25) or a cost-per-engagement basis ($0.10 to $1.00), for larger, longer videos. Standard IAB 300 x 250 units are available, as are half-height 300 x 125 units and larger 640 x 480 units.

The concept has enormous potential for both advertisers and publishers, and the first ads are being introduced on Tuesday. It is not the first time a company has tried to marry captchas with advertising, as NuCaptcha competitor Solve Media rolled out a similar product just last month. Like Solve Media’s other captchas, however, the monetized versions contain static numbers and letters and do not provide the advanced, more secure video technology.

The third major player in the captcha space is ReCaptcha, a pioneer in the category that was purchased by Google in 2009. It seems that under Google’s management the past year or so, ReCaptcha’s focus has shifted from the security side more toward book digitization.

Visit NuCaptcha’s website to view a demonstration and find out more about the Engage security platform.

NuCaptcha Introduces Video to Website Security

Linc Wonham — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Every Internet user encounters them regularly: those nonsensical strings of characters that we’re asked to decipher before we can move on to the next page of a website. What some of you also know is that they are called captchas, and that the balance between protecting your site from spambots and driving away frustrated visitors is a delicate one.

The captcha market is forced to continuously increase the degrees of difficulty in its products as computer hacking becomes more advanced, and the battle’s biggest losers have become the increasingly befuddled Internet users and the businesses that try to serve them. Now there’s a new video animation technology available from NuCaptcha that the company touts as being both extremely user-friendly and highly secure.

Video offers the greatest advancement in captcha technology since it was first introduced ten years ago because the motion is near impossible for computers to read but very easy for humans. The first product launched on the NuCaptcha platform is NuCaptcha Basic, a free service for websites and blogs that provides up to 25,000 captchas per month with themes such as the environment, sports and abstract.

Other products in the captcha space are made by Google and Microsoft, to name two, but this is the first one to incorporate video animation. NuCaptcha was launched by Leap Technologies Inc.