Incidents

The "Rape Now" CAPTCHA Is Surely an Unexpected Word Verification

Interesting word verification discovered on Facebook

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

13th of December 2007, 07:49 GMT

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We all know how annoying a CAPTCHA is, but we've all understood that they are pretty useful when it comes to our security on the Internet. That's why we accept them even

if sometimes we can't read them and type the text correctly. But, what if you are asked to reproduce some unexpected CAPTCHAs like "rape now", "wiped president" or "Toledo playmates"? That would be something... The folks at "The Register" today reported that some weird word verifications were found on Facebook, one of the most popular social networking services on the web. As you can see in the adjacent picture provided by The Register, the user in the front of the monitor was asked to reproduce a CAPTCHA reading "rape now".

And this message is displayed while a picture of a Facebook registered member is shown in the same window with the CAPTCHA. And don't forget the social network is extremely popular among the Internet users, attracting approximately 250,000 new members every day, as the company's official said.

Getting back to the CAPTCHA, "The Register" reports it is generated by ReCaptcha, "a project sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University researchers". Although the technology generates approximately 30 million word verifications every day, they receive approximately 1 complaint per month, the researchers told "The Register".

"Although there is very heavy filtering against offensive CAPTCHAs (we have over 1000 words in our list of offensive terms), in very rare cases, inappropriate words can be shown. We work very hard to keep such words out of the system, but in general it is impossible to guarantee that nothing offensive will ever be displayed", Luis von Ahn, one of the researchers, said according to the same source.

This wouldn't be the first time when such a CAPTCHA is shown, but Facebook has to reduce the amount of those weird word verifications, because I don't think such a phrase would be useful for a teenager registered on the social network.

TAGS:

facebook | captcha | security | social network

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