Thinking Captcha
Update: The source is now live!
I never thought I'd do it, but the day has arrived. I'm starting to get enough blog spam, at a consistent rate, that I need to start thinking about prevention.
But I hate captcha controls. They're all so hard to read.
So I had an idea. How can I make it easy to use, but still require specific input from users so that automated spam posters get blocked? You make it point and click, instead of type :)
This is a rough prototype. I know they're lifelike, but those faces are not actually me, but only hand drawn stunning likenesses.
But anyway, here's me plan.
I store a few different pictures of my head somewhere. And then everytime the comment form is loaded, it randomly picks some of the pictures (say, 5 or 6). It then, from those six, randomly picks 2 or 3. To submit the comment, you have to click on those 2 or 3 pictures of me (some JavaScript highlights them as they are clicked). When it's submitted, the selections are compared to the correct ones, and it's all good.
I'm interested to find out just how complex things need to be to stop automated systems from spamming me. This (in my head at least) seems simple enough.
So keep an eye out. I've made the mods to the CS datalayer to get the image info. I've created the extra DB table. I've got the html about rendered. I just need to write the javascript, create some better images, and update the admin interface so I can register images without sitting in query analyzer.
Anyone have any comments? Am I taking the wrong approach?
I just really hate those hard to read images with dodgy writing :)