The point is that reCAPTCHA added a second part to the test to put millions of human users to work - a few seconds at a time - to digitize historical text for ongoing record keeping.

If the human could pass the first part, it would accept the user’s input for the second part as an accurate translation. The test was essentially split into two parts shown side-by-side - one traditional CAPTCHA to determine the humanity of the user, and a second image of letters from a piece of text the computer was trying to digitize. ReCAPTCHA follows a similar principle, but instead of just utilizing meaningless text to see if the user is a real human, it was designed to help computers digitize old books and newspapers. This was revolutionary because most humans could pass it easily, but computers couldn’t solve it themselves. If they couldn’t identify the letters and numbers, the test wouldn’t submit their requests. When faced with a CAPTCHA, users needed to decipher broken text correctly to prove that they were, in fact, human. In the early 2000s, when it was created, CAPTCHA used a distorted text (letters and numbers) test to prevent bots from compromising websites. It’s a mouthful, but the name says it all - it can decipher the difference between a human and a computer operator. The acronym CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. But there are some key differences between the two safety checks. They’re typically found on contact, comment, login, and password reset forms. What are CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA?ĬAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA serve the same purpose: protecting your website against bots and other security threats. Then, we’ll show you how to enable reCAPTCHA on WordPress and explore additional security measures you should implement.

We’ll also go over the different versions and the pros and cons of each one. In this post, we’ll cover the evolution of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA. There are quite a few different versions, but they all can help protect your WordPress website from spambots and make your life simpler. You may have done so many of these little quizzes that you groan just seeing one on a form. If you’ve used the internet anytime in the last decade, chances are you’ve had to pass a CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA test.

Bot solves captcha thinking human