Google's CAPTCHA Cracked?

Slashdot reports that spammers are now claiming to have cracked Google's CAPTCHA system. This comes after reports that Microsoft's CAPTCHA system has also been cracked. And here I am always needing two or three tries in order to read Blogger's CAPTCHAs. It's a depressing state of affairs. It is now almost easier for spam-bots to send out penis enlargement ads and get rich quick scams than it is for legitimate users send each other pictures of cats....Now that I think about it, no one will ever notice the difference anyway.

Blogger Thinks I'm a Spammer

Here's a new experience. I was editing an article on my blog today when a CAPTCHA appeared at the bottom of the Blogger editing window. It was accompanied by the following explanation:

Your blog requires word verification

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

Before we can turn off mandatory word verification on your posts we'll need to have a human review your blog and verify that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

It seems Blogger is taking the news that it is being used to create numerous spam blogs seriously. They have even put up a page explaining what they are doing to fight spam blogs. While I've always found CAPTCHAs annoying and even though spammers are learning to defeat CAPTCHAs, you can hardly blame Blogger for trying to fight spam somehow. I for one wish them well.