Friday Rant - Those dreaded Captchas

I bet you were all expecting today's rant to be about Boots, weren't you? After all, I was one of the thousands of people affected. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read about it here (I can't believe that I've just willingly posted a link to the Daily Mail website. And the ground hasn't opened up and swallowed me. Yet)

But I think enough ranting has been done on that topic now. I'm feeling very sorry for the person who pressed that first "Send" button and who, at this very moment, is probably polishing up their CV while scoffing their third giant bar of chocolate. Or bottle of gin.

No, I'm going to revisit one of my regular ranting topics - Captcha codes. You can read about how cross they make me in my old post, Do Captcha Codes Make You Cross?  where you will also find some tips to help make them easier to cope with. Do you know that with the traditional two word ones, they aren't case sensitive? That you don't need to include any of the special characters or punctuation you may be shown? Or most importantly that one of the words is actually a dummy and you can type more or less anything in its place? If  you think that learning any of these would make it quicker for you to comment on blogs or enter competitions, that post is the place for you.

Sometimes Captchas make me laugh out loud - just try googling "Crazy Captchas" and you'll see what I mean. And sometimes they make me superstitious. Only today I had one that included a number - the same number as the very first phone number I had as a child. Well, there is no way I am NOT going to win that competition now, is there? (If only!)

But most of the time they make me cross. Undecipherable ones make me cross. Ones that are rejected over and over again make me cross. Ones that look like real words but aren't make me cross. Ones where upper case, lower case and numerals make me cross - when you see a l, for instance, is it a number one, an upper case i or a lower case L? The spammers that have made them necessary in the first place make me cross.

And do you know what makes me crosser than ever? The fact that while we are struggling to decipher them, to decide which letters or numbers to use, even to make then out when the typeface is obscure or tiny, those spammers  that made them all necessary in the first place can simply subscribe to a Captcha-cracking service like Captcha Monster and have all the hard work done for them!

I'm linking up with Ranty Friday over at Mummy Barrow