News

Confident Technologies intros alternative to CAPTCHA online security

May 11, 2010

Confident Technologies Inc., a provider of intuitive and secure authentication solutions, today announced the immediate availability of Confident CAPTCHA, an image-based alternative to the difficult-to-read, text-based CAPTCHA tests used on websites to stop spam and bots.

Confident CAPTCHA increases website security while greatly improving the user experience, leading to reduced website and transaction abandonment, greater customer satisfaction and increased conversion rates.

CAPTCHA tests (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are used on e-commerce sites, blogs, social networking sites, Web-based email accounts and other websites to verify that actions such as account registrations, sales transactions and comment posts are initiated by a human and not automated computer programs – called bots – which propagate online fraud and spam. CAPTCHAs commonly used on websites today display distorted letters for the user to decipher. In an attempt to make CAPTCHA more difficult for bots to decipher, the text has become increasingly difficult for humans to read – causing visitors to abandon sales transactions and websites out of frustration. Online businesses lose new account registrations or sales revenue; and blogs and social networking sites lose the user participation that is the lifeblood of the social Web.

Industry research indicates that CAPTCHAs are responsible for reducing website conversions by anywhere from 4 to 10 percent, according to Confident Technologies. Yet, they’re a necessary because bots cause serious harm: In a recent incident, bots were used by scalpers to fraudulently purchase 1.5 million tickets from Ticketmaster, resulting in a $25 million fraud.

Confident CAPTCHA solves this problem by presenting website visitors with a grid of easily identifiable images and instructing the user to click on specific pictures. The test is much easier on human users, yet more secure than traditional, text-based CAPTCHAs.

"The text-based CAPTCHAs seen on so many websites today simply are not effective for security or usability," said Curtis Staker, CEO, Confident Technologies, Inc. "Confident CAPTCHA provides a layer of security that is both more effective at stopping bots and easier on people. More importantly, Confident CAPTCHA goes beyond a simple security verification test. It serves as the platform for the first Intelligent CAPTCHA, which will deliver added value to website owners by providing reporting, adjusting the security challenge based upon risk factors, and delivering a unique advertising platform that will allow website owners to include pictures of their products and services in the CAPTCHA image grid."

A unique image grid is randomly generated for each session, and the specific pictures and their location on the grid change each time. Additionally, the dynamic database of Confident CAPTCHA images is continually changing, making it unlikely for a bot to solve the CAPTCHA using random guessing or brute force attacks. Confident CAPTCHA also employs image obfuscation techniques that are not noticeable to the human eye, but help prevent bots from recognizing the images using computer vision.

"We started using Confident CAPTCHA on our website to prevent bots from spamming our online form," said Patrick Fearn, president, Certified Folder Display Service Inc., which provides brochure rack displays and travel magazine advertising at more than 21,000 locations throughout the Western United States and Canada. "As a company that specializes in providing compelling visual displays for our advertisers, we were conscious of the fact that the CAPTCHA on our website should be visually appealing and easy for our website visitors to use. The last thing we would want is for a potential client to abandon the form because they grew frustrated with the CAPTCHA. We also really liked the potential for future advertising opportunities by placing our own photos within the image grid. With Confident CAPTCHA on our site, we stop the spam without hindering our website visitors."