Is Yahoo unuseable?

[digiweb]

I had to type this in to send my email. Feels like an unreasonably high standard to decipher Yahoo's spam thwarter scripts.

[gorillaboy]

That's not as bad as some of the ticketmaster ones I've seen.

[John Scott]

Pretty messy.

[Sketch]

Yer its messy but I guess it does a good job stopping SPAM!

[JamieJelly]

some of them are so unreadable it takes me two attempts to get it right

[LazyJim]

is it the first one you've sent?
do they ask for it every time you send?

Doesn't look like a very easy one, they must be getting scared of degree level (or higher) AI people writing programs to crack the code, not realising that the average spammer couldn't spell AI let alone program some! (OK maybe they're not that thick but they're not going to catch up with the AI pros that quick).

Does it have an audio alternative?

[Tekno Monkey]

Why can't they use a simple one?

@LazyJim, I had no idea that there was programs that could bypass that.

[LazyJim]

for all I know it could be a newer one that the current cutting-edge AI can't handle, but the uni post-grads and profs usually manage it, it's an on-going challenge and makes them better at AI and computer vision, at the same time stimulates the production of harder puzzles and this way it keeps the spammers' bots out-of-date.

Of course it can make it tough for humans too!

[Kitchen Designer]

I joined up for Flickr last night and got the same type of anti spam script. The k's were so distorted that they look like x's etc etc. I was pissed off because I had to enter the code three times (and do a short correspondence course in Cryptography as well).

WTF Yahoo?