OK, so I found this site, which weirdly enough offers free CAPTCHA solving services. Has anybody heard of it? Does somebody know what's behind the site (proxy, ocr software, etc)? Is it even real, or is it a hoax of some sorts?

Anyway, they say they do it for blind people (and assure you that they don't allow spammers to use their service), and yet they offer an API which would be really handy if one wanted to completely automate the service in order to send spam...

What do you think?

NOTE: I'm not related in any way to this site: just curious about how this works, where's their profit, and how good they are...

Well, I finally gathered strengths, registered to the site and submitted a few (really easy) captchas just to see what happens... And it seems that they don't solve them at all: after about an hour of showing "RESULT: Processing", they just changed the status to "RESULT: Expired", and that's it!

Anyway, it looks like a hoax, but the site has no ads, so I really don't see the point...

Maybe they are collecting CAPTCHA's?

The service is real, believe it or not. I came across it several months ago shortly after it was released... at one point you would reliably receive a response in less than a minute.

Their business model is obviously: offer it free to the Average Joe, and if Average Joe turns into Often Joe they negotiate a fee for the 'bulk processing'. They state on their site that they aren't accepting customers... but they are.

If you were to do some tests you would come to the conclusion that they are using hired labor. I would assume that the fee charged to Often Joe more than makes up for the Average Joe's free usage.

Legal? That's debatable. MySpace, among others, have a habit of sending C&D's claiming Tortious Breach of Contract or Tortious Interference by using automated software or things that are otherwise against the Terms and Conditions of the particular site. I've never heard of a case that a user was actually brought to court on charges of Tortious Intereference... usually they just go for the spam/abuse of network route.

Well, I guess now they're too popular to deal with us Average Joe's, because I'm not getting answers at all... they've probably underhired solvers, and thus prioritize paid users over potential new users :-P

Anyway, somewhere in the site they explicitly prohibit using their service with MySpace CAPTCHA's, so I'm guessing they've already received a C & D note from them...

The "Offshore Incorporation - Lawsuit and Asset Protection" post on their blog might also have something to do with it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/26/2007 04:09PM by NickWilliams.

Oh, I'd love to tempt them to move the company to Argentina... not that I'd actually take care of it (wouldn't know how either), but maybe I could fool them long enough to take a look at the code / system they're using :-P

I would imagine the system is fairly simple consisting of the web service for uploading/checking status of the captcha's along with another side of the system for retrieval and answering done by the hired labor - whether it be a web app or desktop app... not all that much involved. Any code you might see likely wouldn't impress anyone unless it belongs in a post on The Daily WTF.

Hmm, then it's not even worth the trouble... I was hoping for a webapp-ocr interface :P

Guys!

No need for Captcha killer if there will be Captchas Apocalypses. In the November ;-). As I wrote in other topic: http://sla.ckers.org/forum/read.php?7,16946

My project Month of Bugs in Captchas will take care about captchas.

Best wishes & regards,
MustLive
Administrator of Websecurity web site
http://websecurity.com.ua