A latest improvement in the spam fighting tool is the software that fights spam. A tool developed recently, allows von Ahn’s team to digitize documents and protect them against spam messages. This particular technology is known as CAPTCHA. Yahoo seems to be making good use of this technology under the name of CAPTCHACHAT.
The CAPTCHA tool has become popular with the net users. Why? Well, the answer lies in the codes that are used by the tool. CAPTCHA is a shorter version of Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart. This tool uses letters and numbers in a distorted manner. An interesting fact is,
There’s still about 100 million books to be digitized, which at the current rate will take us about 400 years to complete.
Here’s how the digitizing is done. The image is positioned on a rubber sheet and it’s pulled to distort the geometry. So from now on, spammers beware!
Carnegie Melon school is using this particular spam prevention technology in order to decipher words in books. This seems by far, the most cunning weapon devised against spams.
Image Credit: BBC
