Itâs the bane of our life for many of us just looking to complete an online form. Still, the technology behind the common Captcha test â the one that asks you to confirm âIâm not a robotâ before getting you to select all the hills and traffic lights in a set of blocks â is pretty impressive.
And thatâs before you learn that Captcha actually stands for something: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
The Turing Test, created by Second Word War codebreaker Alan Turing, concerns a test which distinguishes between man and machine.
Thankfully, the âquite interestingâ factual entertainment show QI had an explanation of Captcha during an episode of the quiz, in which host Sandi Toksvig explained: âTicking the box is not the point; itâs how you behaved beforeyou tick the box that is analysed.
âTo be honest, I canât tell you all the details - because they keep it secret, because they donât want people trying to cheat the test - but broadly speaking, you tick the box, and it prompts the website to check your browsing history.
âLet us say, for example, just before you ticked the box, you watched a couple of cat videos; you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg; you checked a Gmail account before you got down to work⦠all of that makes them think that you must be a human.â
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So what about ticking the box? Apparently, that action could even help the test determine if youâre a human based on how you moved the mouse.
How the internet's 'I Am Not A Robot' form ACTUALLY works | QI - BBCwww.youtube.com
Toksvig concluded that regularly clearing your browsing history or using âincognito modeâ might therefore lead the test to believe you are a robot.
To this, panellist David Mitchell replied: âThat is not the sign of a robot; thatâs the sign of a w*****.â
Thatâs not a fact, by the way â we just thought it was funny.
And now you knowâ¦
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