Flash as Captcha

Editing my bio over at OpenARP, and noticed Aral’s using a Flash movie for a Captcha test in his Wysiwyg Wiki. This is the 2nd time I’ve seen Flash used in this manner.

I use it for my comments so blog spambots cannot directly hit my mt-comments.cgi without knowing the key. Since the key is just a variable hidden in my SWF, and no blogspammer has yet written a Perl spambot to rip open my SWF, introspect the variables, and thus carry this key to my server… I remain protected from blog spam.

I’ve noticed over the past 3 years, Captcha’s have gotten more and more elaborate. The one used when signing up for an Microsoft Passport, used in Windows Messenger, is nigh unreadable (even after 5 page refreshes), and I’ve got 20/20 vision.

Aral’s using it to confirm a human is in fact making an edit to the Wiki just by a simple animation (a lot more readable than the Salvador Dali’s I’ve seen generated). Smart thinking, Aral! Another great niche use of Flash.

6 Replies to “Flash as Captcha”

  1. Hey man, would love to take the credit for it but I didn’t make the captca, just integrated it into WysyiwygWiki. It’s called VeriWord and was created by Huda Elmastani.

    Of course, the one big issue is that it’s terrible for people with visual impairments. Gotta find a solution to that (a vocalizer would be great!)

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