It takes me multiple attempts to get it right.

Excellent vision. 20-10, dominant periphreal.
Lousy color perception.
(No complaints.)

The problem with this captcha is presentation. It's all down to marketing really.

Just think, why does it have to be a boring, undescifrable text-based captcha?

We could have a random ship image captcha that requires you to input the AOB. This would also be good practice. Other ideas: ship identification, something similar to those old pc games that asked you stuff from the manual or a TDC solution captcha for the pros :haha:

Oh and I can do these in PHP for you if you like the idea.

I'd need my weapons officer to do that for me :O:

Or we could just finish off quotes from Das Boot...

...Clear the map! I can't navigate on ??????? :salute:

While its a cool idea you have to realize that a goodly number of pepole visit this site whom have no idea what AOB is let alone how to estimate it.

Yes I know. And I do like to joke a lot, you'll get used :DL
The idea remains, it doesn't have to be text as long as it has enough states for it not to be guessed.

Beware of Surveys!
Although who finds the time to fill these stupid surveys anyway.

I came across Surveys in a download i completed last night, Before i can unzip the app i must first enter a password - nothing strange about that as most uploaders mention the pw on their thread but this one never mentioned a pw or told us we have to complete a survey! So i go to the address cause i was curious and lo and behold first one wants my mobile number the second one took me to a well known website here asking me to register well im already registered with this website so i go to the contact us link and notice the email is a hotmail.com :shifty: <=== total giveaway. The real sites Contact us is not Hotmail.com but .co.nz.

Anyways the uploader was from Trademe forums and has been banned.

This survey's is becoming common now have you always wondered how they automatically know where your from - checking your IP address on their Fake site database servers or something then its ahh this chap is from NZ so up pops a well known site in your country for you to register and give out your personal details so they can email spam your ass for eternity only for the site to be a fake!

Just like the 3 or 4 fake emails i get each week claiming to be Blizzard entertainment wanting me to log in and check my details I go to 'Sender' and see its from a Hotmail.com :roll: Do people really fall for this?

Intresting point!
 

Are you use Firefox or IE when you are on the web? I can say at there are easy way to prevent, where you are or what kind of ip you may have..so

I got soomething similar not long ago. got an email from my 'bank' telling me about an unauthorized transaction, and a link to log in. I didn't think anything of it at the time, and the link took me to a very realistic looking site. I twigged as soon as I saw the somewhat dodgy URL and some odd page errors. Still, its easy to see how so many people are frauded out of their money these days!

Yes I hate filling in the verification string as well, I had to enter it 4 times before it accepted it! mainly because it's so damned hard to read, sometimes half the letter is off the screen and trying to determine what is upper/lower case is a pain!:-? Atleast you can regenerate till you find one that seems readable!:oops:

Oh I am glad that it's not just me that struggles with these damn things. It doesn't help that I'm red/green colour blind and some of them are very hard to read indeed. :damn:

Yeah, I get them all the time in my Junk box from banks that changed ownership and names years ago, banks I've never had dealings with, and credit cards too. If I get anything that looks vaguely creditable I'll go to their site the normal way, unfortunately many people don't. I hope you scanned thoroughly afterwards?

I do get regular emails from my legal friends in Nigeria, but I'm still waiting for this inheritance, they promise me it'll be any day... :rotfl2:

I have another email account set up and reply to them from this, saying I don't believe them - but will be willing if they can prove they are genuine by sending me just $2. They're not stoopid either, or they don't have $2.

If I ever see anything of that sort I go directly to the bank in person to speak with a human being bank officer... yes they still have those.

It can be limited to accounts less that 10 posts. Bots which are going to use flood searches would have 0 posts.

Good idea :yeah:

Dear Neal, forum admins and other Subsim gods,

Although I fully understand the reason behind it and the need to prevent spam, the current image verification captcha is very annoying. I've been using my best anger management techniques to try to live with it so far (serenity now, insanity later) but tonight I finally cracked when I had to redo the same search 4 times because of it. :damn: I was so pissed I took the time to find this thread to vent (having to use the damn captcha again, lol).

Anyway I don't just want to come here to whine so I'm offering a few comments and alternatives to the existing image verification.

1- vBulletin 3.8.4 seems to have other anti-spam verification types available, including my personal favorite, the "Question and Answer" type. In case anyone reading hasn't seen it before, the user is simply asked a question and must type the answer. The question can be anything, usually something simple like "2+2=?" or "what color is a banana", etc. Can't we use this one, it's much, much more user friendly.

2- Alternatively, I believe there are vBulletin plugins for reCaptcha (http://www.google.com/recaptcha) which I have found to be easier to handle than the old style verification images currently used. And using reCaptcha promotes literacy by helping digitizing old books as well as fighting spam! You still get the odd word that you can't quite make out but they are few and far between.

3- Finally, if all other alternatives are exhausted, I would be willing to pay to have this blasted thing removed. I was thinking perhaps a small one time donation (around 5 or 10$) to Subsim could entitle a registered user to have the verification disabled for his account. This way everybody wins: Subsim still fights spam and gets a bit extra cash and the hardcore forum user gets rid of the annoying captcha and helps contribute to the future of the community.

Anyway, these are just ideas in case you guys didn't consider them already.

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead but now I feel much better:O:.

Thanks for reading.