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OCR In Self-Defense 
By: Oleg
CAPTCHA or the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart is widely advertised but one wonders if it is really useful or not. But, before we discuss its practical utility, let us see what CAPTCHA is all about. It is a test, which helps the computer to distinguish between machines and human beings. It creates and grades tests that automatically accept all humans and reject all machines.
The idea is that while as humans we can make out a series of distorted letters and numbers, a machine will not be able to make sense of such images. To learn more about how the program works you can visit http://www.protectwebform.com/. There is also a site for our more advanced version of the program at http://www.protectwebform.com/smartcaptcha.
Most website owners find CAPTCHA very useful. Such tests help to prevent programs known as bots. Bots are programs that pretend to be humans and abuse the services of the internet. Bots try to sell or make you sign up for thousands of free mail services. The bots spam your inbox daily. They intrude into common chat rooms to accumulate personal information and publishing links to various sites for promotional benefits.
The bots crack your passwords, encroach upon your privacy and use your personal information for commercial use without your permission. They create worms that can cause immense harm to your machine.
You can use a CAPTCHAS or a CAPTCHA plug-in (http://www.protectwebform.com/plugin_wordpress) to stop these bots from taking over your system. Many sites of all sizes have installed these. Once the CAPTCHA is running as bots try to get into your system, they will be asked to type out a distorted image shown on the screen. Since computers can rarely translate these messy images into letters as humans can, it can stop the bot. you may have seen a CAPTCHA when logging onto your mail service, into a chatroom, or onto your bank website.
Spammers send unsolicited, undesirable and unwarranted messages in bulk to your inbox. Besides that, there can be other spam too in the form of usenet newsgroup spam, log spam, search engine spam and the like.
The reason why advertisers resort to spamming is because it does not cost much. They have to bear only the cost of managing the list of individuals that are targeted to receive the mails. Moreover, you cannot hold the sender accountable for the mass mailers they send. Spamming has become really ubiquitous since there are no entry barriers. No wonder your inbox is always flooded with mass mailers.
Usenet spam is a message that can be sent to twenty or more Usenet newsgroups. This kind of spam floods the newsgroups with unnecessary advertisement and posts. It also challenges your ability to accept and manage the topics on the system.
There is another kind of email spam that targets individuals with direct messages. It scans postings from Usenet or pilfers from the Internet mailing list. This kind of spamming involves some expenditure.
Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles
The author, Oleg, is an expert on CAPTCHA design. Click to learn more about his ingenious new CAPTCHA Plugin technology.
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