7

Has anyone developed or found a workaround for getting past captchas while using a text only webbrowser, such as Links? The only thing that occurred to me would be to download and render the image using an ASCII art program. Any other suggestions would be appreciated, as would a good ASCII art program.

C. Ross
  • 6,174
  • 16
  • 62
  • 82
  • 1
    The resolution needed to correctly interpret many of today's non-broken captchas would likely more than fill your screen when rendered in ASCII. – eleven81 Jan 11 '10 at 18:55
  • Scrolling would still work. And sitting waaay back from the monitor. – stone Jan 11 '10 at 19:00
  • 6
    Sounds like an excuse to build that 9-monitor PC I've always wanted. – Phoshi Jan 11 '10 at 19:10
  • Next thing you know they'll come up with colored captchas. – mtone Jan 11 '10 at 19:17
  • 1
    For what purpose do you wish to circumvent a captcha ? Something like human recognizion on SO, or download from hosting, or ... ? – Rook Jan 12 '10 at 00:28
  • 2
    @monotone - Can't wait ! :) "What colour is this text ?" ... you: "uhmm, #FF8080 ?" – Rook Jan 12 '10 at 00:47
  • I've seen captchas that say enter the word the letters in red spell out. I've also math problems spelled out "ten minus six". I've seen missing letter captchas "_ppl_ p__" spelling “apple pie” so you enter "aeie". I seen enter the letters in caps. I've seen enter non numbers. I've seen substitution (like replace "x" with "tz" in "abeixot". I'm sure there has to be a way if there is a demand for it. Soon to prove we are human we will have to answer questions like we are playing “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” (“Enter the name of the city where man first powered, airplane flight?”) – Scott McClenning Jan 12 '10 at 03:39
  • Maybe this should be migrated to doctype.com? – Nick Bolton Jan 12 '10 at 06:19
  • @Nick: Not trying to design a site with a text only capatcha, trying to interpret an image captatcha with text only. @monotone: Colored ASCII art shouldn't be that much of a challenge, and I have a color terminal. – C. Ross Jan 12 '10 at 14:29
  • 1
    I think you may mean "Captcha" and not "Capatcha" (isn't that a kind of soup?) – Nick Bolton Jan 12 '10 at 16:40
  • 1
    @Nick: you're thinking of "gazpacho". it's really good soup, but more of a summer thing. – quack quixote Jan 17 '10 at 08:42
  • 1
    @ldigas: It's not "circumventing" a captcha, it's normal use. Captchas are there to distinguish between computers and human beings. He is a human being. – Matthew Jan 17 '10 at 16:51
  • @Matthew - I never doubted he was a human being :) But captcha's today can be avoided by certain alhorithms (google: Jdownloader for example, and see it in action ... very nice demonstration) ... so I was wondering what was his goal when asking this question. – Rook Jan 17 '10 at 17:16
  • @~quack Haha, I'm glad someone got my joke! ;) – Nick Bolton Jan 17 '10 at 18:42

3 Answers3

3

I think that in text only webbrowser it would be much easier to use "audio" captchas, sometimes described as "for handicap users".

rafalmag
  • 457
  • 1
  • 4
  • 12
1

Update:

For those who read the question as "As a webmaster, what can I use as a text based alternative to CAPTCHA?" please read my original answer -- however it seems that the OP actually meant "As a user, how can I convert CAPTCHA images to a text representation?".

To answer the later, I'd say that this is not really feasible with ASCII art, unless you were willing to use the entire screen, since you'd need this kind of "resolution". If it's a website that people commonly browse using lynx, then you could contact the webmaster and ask them to solve the problem ;-) -- I was going to suggest wgeting the image and using an ASCII art generator, but then I realised that it'd most likely change each time it's downloaded.

Original answer:

Ask the user a simple math question; what is 1 + 2? This will protect you against generic spam bots (of which there are many), but not targeted attacks (of which there are few). However, ASCII art would be a much cooler solution.

Community
  • 1
Nick Bolton
  • 3,330
  • 9
  • 39
  • 51
  • 2
    I'm pretty sure C. Ross was looking for a solution to viewing *other people's* web sites using a text-only browser. He can't redesign their sites. :) – CarlF Jan 12 '10 at 07:49
  • Aha, hmm, well I believe you. However, he certainly didn't make this clear from my point of view. Perhaps I need more sleep. – Nick Bolton Jan 12 '10 at 16:28
0

Take a look at Practical non-image based CAPTCHA approaches? on Stack Overflow, it has interesting info.

Community
  • 1
Moayad Mardini
  • 4,003
  • 7
  • 27
  • 24