After trying to own the english words ‘face’ and ‘book’ now Facebook is trying to own ‘social CAPTCHA‘. 🙂 You can read about the earlier patent at http://bit.ly/dqAwNx. The term CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.
You must have noticed when creating a new account on Facebook and Google you are given a random text including alphabets and numbers. You have to copy that text in the given box. That is Captcha and when you are asked to answer a series of questions that is Social Captcha.
Captchas prevent spammers on the web. By displaying pictures and asking some information may be a better way to protect the site effectively.
Image credit
What Facebook will do?
This has been in testing stages since long, now Facebook wants it to be a patent.
There are so many security threats on line. Spamming is at its best so every one including the other sites on line are trying their best to stop it.
Pros:
- I think instead of random words people will find it interesting to give answers to the obvious questions.
- When asked to identify any person on his/her friend list person would not fail until and unless it’s some random profile picture of a cat or flower. 🙂
Cons:
- Ever imagine what will happen to a person who has a lot of friends and do not care to be really friends with all of them. 🙂 In that case I think it will a problem. What if you know the person but still the picture is of his dog or a flower?
- I think it’s an easier thing to be used. So it might be easier for attackers/spammers also. When asked to enter a random text with images I have to re-enter it many times till I am correct but in this case I do not think I have to make so many efforts.
It is still an improvement on an ordinary CAPTCHA, since ordinary CAPTCHAs only protect against certain threats or attacks. At least Facebook is trying hard to be more secure which is a very good thing to do. 🙂
What are your views against such thing. Do let me know with your comments.