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I used to receive alot of spam comments before this, I did a little to prevent it by implementing Project Honey Pot as you read in my previous blog post here.
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It seems like I have not been receiving anymore spam comments since then but while searching for ways to prevent spammers, I also read about reCaptcha.
But before I begin about reCaptcha, let me tell a little about Captcha.(Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) I'm sure you have come across many websites where you are asked to key in some 'security' code before you can proceed. The security code are usually distorted alphabets which are meant to be readable by human only. Many methods are used to 'distort' the alphabets including curving the alphabets, adding strokes to the alphabets, all with the intention of ensuring computer bots which usually perform spamming or auto registration could not decipher them.
Initially, it was very fool proof, but somehow, hackers manage to break the Captcha technology as now their bots are able to read Captcha as well.
So, a group of programmers came up with ReCaptcha . ReCaptcha is a very brilliant project, because it works by scanning words from old books, which are arealdy yellowing and computers (Using Optical Character Recognizing) can't digitize the words because it usually ends up with wrong word.
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The difference between Captcha and ReCaptcha is, the former uses fonts which are computer generated and then distorted, while ReCaptcha uses fonts scanned directly from books, which only human can understand most of the time.
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A ReCaptcha code consists of two words, one which is computer generated, and another one which is scanned from books. Computer bots can usually decipher one of it, but only human can decipher the other one which is the one scanned from books. And so each time you key in a ReCaptcha, you are helping to digitize old books, and helping the blind who rely on speech technology to read. How ReCaptcha knows that you are actually keying in the right words for the scanned portion is by verifying your answers with others who will decipher the same scanned words as well. The more people giving the same answers, the higher chance that it will be used to digitize the particular word in the book.
I have already implemented ReCaptcha on the user registration of one of my lecturer's website which I helped to create, and it's working flawlessly, in preventing spams, and helping to digitize books.
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IT contents only 
