Captcha is software that keeps computer programs from sending you email. It requires senders to type in numbers and letters before hitting the SUBMIT button that sends the email.
This reduces spam to some degree. For letters that sign you up for subscriptions, it's useful. My weekly Tip of the Week uses a mailing program that uses a five-character captcha program to keep out spam.
Then there is double captcha, called recaptcha. It renders normal email such a pain that most users will decide not to contact you.
It does not just insert five numbers and letters. It requires the sender to figure out an unreadable distorted letters. Why? Because spam programs cannot read it yet. True, but neither can I.
Site designers recommend this monstrosity, or install it and tell the site's owner it's necessary, in order to make their lives easier. They do not worry that it makes the email sender[s life more difficult. A programmer is paid to program, not make user's lives easier.
The co-designer of recaptcha has explained why they came up with recaptcha. They have an agenda. They want to reduce the cost of converting text images of pre-1960 books into machine-readable text. This will help Google with its project of scanning in old books for a profit -- ad revenue generation. The original printing is less clear than post-1960 books. So, by using recaptcha, the company can decipher these distorted words more accurately. This reduces the cost of converting text images into money. To put it bluntly, it increases Google's profits.
Search for "recaptcha." The first link is to Google's site: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro. Google is a big promoter of recaptcha.
He thinks this is a great idea. The audience at TED clapped.
I do not clap. I simply refuse to use it. I know it will take me five or ten frustrating tries to send my email to a stranger. So, I do not send it.
This website that is rated in the top 50,000 out of a billion sites. I get spam. I don't like spam, But I also want to let my readers communicate with me easily. That is important for me. I put up with spam. I do not use captcha.
I find sites that are rated in the lower 5 million that use recaptcha. There is almost no way that anyone can find a site that is rated below a million by means of a Google search.
I recently found a church's site that uses it. You might imagine that a church would want to make it easy for a visitor to the site -- exceedingly rare -- to contact someone at the church. For that church, recaptcha is an anti-evangelism tool. It keeps people away from the church.
I don't think the pastor thought about it. I don't think he went to the site's designer and said: "We want to make sure that anyone who contacts us feels internally compelled to send us an email. Three or four attempts to get through recaptcha ought to do it." My guess: his programmer simply installed it. I doubt that the pastor has ever thought through the anti-evangelism implications of recaptcha: a way to keep site visitors from becoming walk-in visitors. It may screen out spam. The price is too high, theologically speaking.
This is another example of how subordinate users have become to programmers. Users want one set of results, but programmers are interested in a different set of results -- results that make things easier for programmers.
The people at recaptcha want to further their agenda: letting Google Books or other book-scanning programs make more money as our voluntary social service to them. The people who use recaptcha probably don't know about this agenda. They dutifully accept their programmers' decision to install recaptcha, because "it's the latest technology."
My advice: Don't.
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