Comments for The Cutest Human-Test: KittenAuth

My first post attempt didn't work. I clicked the three kittens, but no post was added, and no errors.

A safer way would be to let someone click on the eyes of the kittens, just like 'picture password' (google...) This would decrease the odds of false positives dramatically!

Some foolish ideas that you have probably already discared can be found here: http://blog.chipsochdip.se/2006/04/07/kittenauth/

:)

did someone already say this?

this is neat, BUT, you are going to run out of novel kitten images.. so, over time, a bot could be designed to catalog and collect ALL of the in-use kitten images.. or even a significant portion would be OK..

then, its not hard to image-match computationally... so, your system would be busted.

yes?

Zane

Why 3 kittens? Just say click on all kittens in the grid and you get 495 possible sets.

Great idea. Looking at some of the negative responses in the comments, it might be worth adding a para in your article to incorporate some of the improvements that people have mentioned already (just coz clearly lots of people don't read through the comments).
All of the attacks that people make on identifying a limited number of kitty images are irrelevant, because a solution has been proposed whereby you could change the identifier dynamically by having separate groupings of images.
I wonder how well you could get away with creating a random image cache by using different google image searches. So that: a) your images are not hosted on your own server, and b) your collection of images can't really be learned.
Admittedly, a problem with this is that the images returned by google on different searches may not all be that obvious... but hey, its a rough idea.

What about "click on all pictures that are upside down" Then the same pictures can be used for both true and false.

I've always that that image identification would be neat -- something like "What is this?", then a picture of a car. If they user types "car", then they are granted access. You could have multiple images of the same thing. The point here is that you never give out the set of words you draw from.

Scenario:
I am blind, and using a screen reader.


Result:
Unable to comment on your website because I can't see what is a kitten and what isn't.


Conclusion:
This is not an accessible solution, and is just as bad as CAPTCHA techniques.


Consolation:
It's a pretty nifty idea.