Topic: Eliminating Captcha's w/ Bitcoin (Read 5581 times)
This is one use for LBAAT.net. You require a user to send bitcoins to themselves in the future. It is provable that the coins are locked up, and allow access.
I think the bitcoin passport/fidelity bond ideas are the best CAPTCHA alternative yet proposed.
I had no idea about this stuff. So your basically saying there are services that have human beings breaking captcha's and people pay for them ? lol
Roughly 80% is still done by specialized scripts developed by the de-captcha service operator, then the 20% that script can not break gets sent to humans in Thailand/Philippines or something, and gets manually broken.
Can your script (or human) crack my proposal?
I had no idea about this stuff. So your basically saying there are services that have human beings breaking captcha's and people pay for them ? lol
Roughly 80% is still done by specialized scripts developed by the de-captcha service operator, then the 20% that script can not break gets sent to humans in Thailand/Philippines or something, and gets manually broken.
Necroing this thread because with bitcoins' growth in popularity this may start becoming relevant.
Also, its not just about captchas... news sites are increasingly requiring login even to +1 or flag a comment; this is a serious PITA! I'm guessing that's because of spammers as well.
I wonder if you would really need to send a txn. Imagine a browser plugin that simply signs a message containing the browser's IP address from a bitcoin address that has held X coins for N days (X,N limits can be chosen by each website). This would limit spammers to relatively few accounts and IP addresses. These could rapidly be identified, either because there are a lot of IP addresses using the same bitcoin address (spam botnets) or simply by downvotes.
Of course just like with today's captchas a web service is providing this so end sites don't have to worry about bitcoin. And is gathering spammer data across all sites...
Also, its not just about captchas... news sites are increasingly requiring login even to +1 or flag a comment; this is a serious PITA! I'm guessing that's because of spammers as well.
I wonder if you would really need to send a txn. Imagine a browser plugin that simply signs a message containing the browser's IP address from a bitcoin address that has held X coins for N days (X,N limits can be chosen by each website). This would limit spammers to relatively few accounts and IP addresses. These could rapidly be identified, either because there are a lot of IP addresses using the same bitcoin address (spam botnets) or simply by downvotes.
Of course just like with today's captchas a web service is providing this so end sites don't have to worry about bitcoin. And is gathering spammer data across all sites...
See here for a description of how to use Bitcoin deposits to replace CAPTCHAs in a low trust way:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_1:_Providing_a_deposit
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_1:_Providing_a_deposit
If you havent been spamming other sites before what are the odds you will start spamming sites in future ?
Seems to me that a human is not going to be troubled by a 5 second or so lag time to get through a captcha, but a machine which is trying will be.
Why not have the site enterer download a bit of code (with zero effort) which needs to do some bitcoin mining then relinquishes a key proving it has tried before being allowed to proceed. Once in a blue moon the code will actually hit paydirt (and the site operator becomes a happy camper.)
With such a solution I would welcome multi-threaded robots hammering at my door.
Eliminate captcha, eliminate the lolz.
Zomg, recaptcha is pedo 
Eliminate captcha, eliminate the lolz.
Idea: Instead of a captcha, send a 1 bitcoin deposit. After a certian amount of time they determine you arent a spammer, and they send you your btc back. This could at least work on forums and wikis.
This is where I was heading with all of this. Basically, help eliminate all the hassles with captcha's.
Also, sending bitcoins has already been automated (look at the jsonrpc API), so this would only make it easier for spammers to bypass the system.
Sending bitcoins can indeed be easily automated but at some price point it would become cost prohibitive for spammers to do on a widespread scale. Spam is dependant on the fact that it costs virtually nothing to send out and therefore they can afford to annoy lots of people with ads that they don't want.
Idea: Instead of a captcha, send a 1 bitcoin deposit. After a certian amount of time they determine you arent a spammer, and they send you your btc back. This could at least work on forums and wikis.
This is where I was heading with all of this. Basically, help eliminate all the hassles with captcha's.
Also, sending bitcoins has already been automated (look at the jsonrpc API), so this would only make it easier for spammers to bypass the system.
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Forums, wikis, etc. are usually looking for verification that people are not bots but are not usually going to charge people for the ability to post/edit.
This is true shouldn't charge to post/edit agreed. Trying to figure out the full-cycle I mentioned originally...
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If you really can find a neat, novel alternative to the captcha solution, I suggest you keep quiet and put it on the market before anyone else does. 
Agreed. There should be a simple here I have bitcoin , here bitcoin leaves my hands , bitcoin eliminates captcha, bitcoin returned to person who sent bitcoin ....
Idea: Instead of a captcha, send a 1 bitcoin deposit. After a certian amount of time they determine you arent a spammer, and they send you your btc back. This could at least work on forums and wikis.
This is where I was heading with all of this. Basically, help eliminate all the hassles with captcha's.
But then you might as well just accept micro-payments as a business model.
Forums, wikis, etc. are usually looking for verification that people are not bots but are not usually going to charge people for the ability to post/edit.
This was already discussed and designed some time ago:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_1:_Providing_a_deposit
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_1:_Providing_a_deposit
Catchphrase:
"My 2 cents"
Idea:
Create a company that takes deposits of 2 Bitcents instead of a Captcha and pays them back after 2 weeks. Website owners get a simple API where they embed a small image that either allows you to send 2 Bitcents to a specified address or take 2 Bitcents from your "my 2 cents"-account that you can pre-charge. If abuse/spam is reported, you don't pay the money back - so honest users can (with an investment of a few Bitcoins) post a LOT of comments (or download files, or whatever else would require a captcha) without having to mess with these silly characters without _any_ costs to them (transaction fees, if any, would be covered by the company and you can just send out a huge multi-target transaction once per day to keep blockchain bloat low) while spammers would have quite some difficulties.
I'd actually love something like this as a plugin for forums (maybe the new bitcoin forum?
) too! Scammer tag? Now you pay your 2 cents per post but won't get them back... Broke forum rules? Instead of getting a temp-ban, you get a temp-pay!
"My 2 cents"
Idea:
Create a company that takes deposits of 2 Bitcents instead of a Captcha and pays them back after 2 weeks. Website owners get a simple API where they embed a small image that either allows you to send 2 Bitcents to a specified address or take 2 Bitcents from your "my 2 cents"-account that you can pre-charge. If abuse/spam is reported, you don't pay the money back - so honest users can (with an investment of a few Bitcoins) post a LOT of comments (or download files, or whatever else would require a captcha) without having to mess with these silly characters without _any_ costs to them (transaction fees, if any, would be covered by the company and you can just send out a huge multi-target transaction once per day to keep blockchain bloat low) while spammers would have quite some difficulties.
I'd actually love something like this as a plugin for forums (maybe the new bitcoin forum?
) too! Scammer tag? Now you pay your 2 cents per post but won't get them back... Broke forum rules? Instead of getting a temp-ban, you get a temp-pay!The idea of creating a single company to do this sort of defeats the purpose of using Bitcoins.
A single company could just collect money in dollars, keep the money in people's accounts, then set up an API for companies to connect to your server where merchants can connect their APIs.
The first step, which would have many more uses than this, would be to integrate a browser plugin with Bitcoin wallets and allow people to just click on a "pay 2 refundable bitcents" button followed by a confirmation by the plugin.
If you can figure out how to sell captcha solutions of 95% accuracy rate on recaptcha for less than USD $1.35 (about 0.25 BTC at todays price) per 1000 solutions, then you will have found a business model.
interesting ....never occurred to me sounds like you know a lot about this ?
Indeed. We're currently spending about $600 a week on bulk captcha solutions from imagetyperz and get their best pricing, but I think there is still room for improvement as the service is paid by paypal or credit card. I also believe they are just reselling some foreign labor using some kind of data entry platform, and that probably involves more fees to get the payments to the individual workers who end up typing these things. Now I have no idea what country or language the actual workers who type the captcha solutions are in, but they are there doing it reliably 24/7 and I'm thinking that there must be ways to connect those workers with the $$$ being paid for the bulk services without the middle men or fees, and the end result should be the most cost competitive captcha solving service out there. Having such a service only available for Bitcoin but at a clearly better pricing will encourage the whole black-hat-seo industry to think about getting into Bitcoin simply as a matter of operational cost savings.
I had no idea about this stuff. So your basically saying there are services that have human beings breaking captcha's and people pay for them ? lol
Scalpers trying to buy up everything on Ticketmaster.com the moment tickets are released
1 BTC is too much, smallest satoshi demonination would work well enough to prevent spam bots easily for forums like here or GLBSE though free whitelisting seems to work fine so far. Or simply having to upload a gpg key that matched your registration email. Spam bots would esplode from all the key generation they'd have to do constantly. Bonus of keys would be PM to PM encryption.
What? Have you thought this through?
Currently spammers (and others) pay about 0.25 BTC per 1000K captchas to bypass existing spam controls because at that price point the cost is < value of the spam. Replacing that with a system that costs 0.0001 BTC would be worthless. The only winners would be spammers who would see their costs fall 99.95%.
1 BTC
Currently buys 4,000 recaptchas bypasses.
Under a 1 satoshi system buys 100,000,000 "spam protected" transactions
You are moving the cost curve in the wrong direction.
1 BTC
Currently buys 4,000 recaptchas bypasses.
Under a "my 2 bitcent system" buys 50 "spam protected" transactions.
Spammers cost rise by a factor of 80x possibly making most spam prohibitively expensive.
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