CAPTCHA for CASH - The end is nigh for the CAPTCHA

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I  thought you may like to know (unless I'm the last one to cotton on!) that a scenario we've theorised about on the ASRG mailing list for years is finally here, there's now at least one commercial service that will translate CAPTCHA's for cash.

I found the link (shown below) to a service that will decode captcha's for you for $2 per 1000 successes. (Ironically it was in an ad served to me by gmail.)

So to anyone who ever proposed a spam "solution" that relied on differentiating between people and machines, and doubted us when we told them that the commercial imperative would be its downfall, read this: 

We told you so, and it only costs two bucks for a thousand!

I predict much more of this in time, with costs falling as more competition enters the market, and I honestly think it presages the end of the useful life of the captcha.

That link: http://www.decaptcher.com/client/

-- correction: Kevin H. politely pointed out, in a comment, that I hadn't read it properly

That isn't $2 per success - it's $2 per 1000 successes. Minimum purchase is $10 = 5,000 spam, er, advertising opportunities

Thanks Kevin, I've updated the post to reflect this.

-- updates:  According to ASRG folks

a) This site has been known about since Oct, '09, so yes I am last to the party as ever!

b) Chris Lewis kindly point this out:

... found sweatshops in India quoting some small number of rupees per thousand, claiming to be able to supply up to 250,000 per day.  At _least_ three years ago.
...
Incidentally, some of the spam filter companies, as part of their technology for trying to figure out whether the jpeg is naughty or not, _claim_ they can solve >90% of all captchas on the fly.

c) More intriguingly Steve Atkins said:

There's even a neural net implemented in javascript as a greasemonkey plugin that'll solve some simple captchas in the browser.

 I had a Googlearound and found this, that may interest you http://ejohn.org/blog/ocr-and-neural-nets-in-javascript/

I found that particularly fascinating, because last year Nikki was telling me all about cognitive psychology and various theories of word and character recognition in humans. I still have all that to look forward to, in my OU degree, but I'm beginning to get an idea of the kind of things I could do for my project if I ever get that far!

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