Are You Human?

Computer security has made vast improvements over the last ten years.  One of the areas in which the computer security has made a large impact on is online purchasing.  Recently, ideas like CAPTCHA, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", have been put in place that prevent robots from making online purchases.  CAPTCHA is also used by online companies like Ticketmaster, so tickets aren't sold out in mere minutes to scalpers using robots.  On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ticketmaster thought scalpers found a way to bypass CAPTCHA.  The tickets would be bought out in minutes, despite CAPTCHA, and resold from a different website with a markup.

Aware of CAPTCHA's shortcomings, four University of Michigan Alumni are creating Are You a Human.  This program is meant to be a more successful replacement of CAPTCHA.  It will be more secure, making it much harder to bypass when making online purchases.  It will also be more user friendly than CAPTCHA.  Some people complain about the difficulty of reading the distorted words CAPTCHA uses.  Are You a Human hasn't revealed any specifics yet for business reasons.  Are You Human already have a working test version and hope to have their official version ready this summer.

Are You Human is a clever idea.  I think it could prove to be difficult task to convince companies to buy their product over the popularly used CAPTCHA.  I have experienced annoyances with CAPTCHA making me believe there is a market for Are You Human.  If the final product meets the creators expectations, it will be a huge success.               

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/captcha-alternative-are-you-a-human-university-of-michigan-ann-arbor-tyler-paxton/

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