The topic of Internet Security is hotter than a pancake these days. It seems like every week a new hacker outbreak occurs, and I find myself scrambling around changing all my personal passwords from ‘password’ to ‘123456’.
Just to be on the safe side, you know?
Unfortunately, many online hosting sites feel very differently about Internet Security, and after determining that having an Alligator tied to every computer in the world wasn’t a very cost-effective solution, the Captcha was born shortly after on this day in history. It now serves and protects the honest citizens of the world from malicious computer-using robots…
Every time I try to open up a Gmail account I feel like I’m in a fucking Dan Brown novel, while I’m staring at some mangled ball of punctuation marks and Greek letters. Half of the characters in these things aren’t even on my keyboard?
Thankfully, I have a friend who may or may not work for the FBI that I hired to assist me in the opening of my Gmail account. Please don’t let that get out. I don’t want to end up getting locked in some quadrant of Area 51 because of my big mouth. But anyways, he and a few of his cryptology apprentices worked on it for about an hour and half until the code was finally cracked, and then I spent the rest of the day trying to remember who I was supposed to email.
In hindsight, I probably could have bought a carrier pigeon through Amazon in less time. Mental note made.
Let’s try a few Captcha’s for fun:
Captcha Exercise #1 – Beginner
If you guessed ‘Sanford and Sons’ – great job! You’re ready for the next challenge!
Captcha Exercise #2 – Intermediate
This one was a little bit more difficult, but if you guessed “^Tetra Hyphen &ter” – great job! Your code reading skills have reached FBI level!
Captcha Exercise #3 – Expert
Alright, this one’s a toughie, but I know you can do it! This is the captcha that they put on the front door access box at Fort Knox. And also on the Gmail application page.
Did you get this one? It’s a little hard because of the black lettering on top of the black background, but maybe try refreshing your page a few times. Still didn’t get it?
Here’s the answer:
“Deport the man that invented this Captcha thingy!”
Chowderhead
Chowderhead, Unassociated Press
