Comments on: Security By Sexiness https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha A running commentary of occasionally interesting things — from Mike Davidson. Thu, 26 May 2016 06:34:31 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Tom Dolan https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14963 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14963 Same as Mike, I pick hot girls like a mindreader but I blow it (maybe a bad choice of phrase there) on trying to pick the third hot guy. Maybe there’s a more universal set of characteristics for ‘hotness’ for girls that has as much to do with the style components than the actual hotness — i.e., photographed in lacey underwhere, cleavage visible, etc. The hot guys don’t seem to be exhibiting any characteristics like this consistently that would help one ‘cheat’ — interesting tho.

]]> By: Kara https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14977 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14977 I’m with Hilary – I failed the male side 8 or 9 times in a row, but passed the female side every time. Apparently I have greater insight into what men perceive as being hot than women. Last I knew, I was in fact a member of the lady side of the species – I wonder what this says about me as a woman?

]]> By: Hilary https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14976 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14976 As a female I can honestly say that the hot males side is not valid at all. I failed 9 times in a row! However, I got nearly perfect results on the female side judging mainly by who was the biggest slut. I suppose humans vary too much for it to be an effectively used. Or maybe I’m just a messed up girl. =P

]]> By: Anders Hovmöller https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14975 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14975 I just tested this by putting a female friend of mine in front of it. 10 or so failures on the hot man version later I think I’m pretty sure that the data on men on hotornot is seriously broken or that it varies too much between women to be useful. Personally I think it’s the former and that this is based on men going to hotornot and rating down hot guys out of jealousy or some other similarly lame emotion :P

]]> By: Ian Lloyd https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14974 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14974 Fun, for sure, but not something you could rely on for accurate results. After all, one man’s ‘beautiful big woman’ is another man’s ‘chubby munter’. I’m so glad I was able to add to the richness of this discussion. :-)

On a serious note, though, this would highly likely fail in many corporate environments:

1) because if people in an office discovered that the site might randomly display NSFW images for something innocent, they won’t risk going there again and
2) these kinds of things are usually blocked by firewalls, and hence will be impossible to get past (that’s already the case for me here at work)

]]> By: Alan H https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14973 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14973 I’ve seen basic math problems. Lullabot.com has one on contact forms, so I assume there’s a Drupal solution. I like the game idea. What about a quick game like tic-tac-toe… guess a number… which hand is it in? ;-)

]]> By: Ben Buchanan https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14972 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14972 It’s an interesting exercise, but the implementation has some problems:
1) “hot” is too subjective. what if a person simply can’t agree with the test? should they be blocked from the system because they don’t share the admin’s taste? as you’ve already noted, working out a random combination is going to take a looooong time.
2) internationalisation is a problem – how do you account for cultural/racial differences?
3) no way in hell this is going to get used in any corporate environment, where it would instantly result in equity complaints.
4) what’s the accessibility fallback – a recording of “this photo is hot” or “this photo is not”? :) i wonder if voice recognition would be able to game that system?

when captchas are inaccessible i think it’s generally because they’re created by coders with an overly-visual mindset – it’s not that captchas can’t be accessible, people just don’t think about it. it’s not good enough to dismiss the issue with a “here we go again”, it’s something that has to be addessed when developing new technology.

using kittens might be better, but then “cute” remains relative – and what about dog lovers who don’t like cats? ;)

perhaps the test could be done with a set of photos of dogs and cats – pick the cats to get in. the surrounding text can be translated to the localised language, the pictures themselves don’t need translation and aren’t subjective – a cat’s a cat, a dog’s a dog.

]]> By: Simon Pioli https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14971 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14971

lordy. here we go swinging-into the accessibility forest again! i was actually amazed it took this long.

Well… Someone had to bring it up, eh? :p

]]> By: Alan H. https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14970 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14970 lordy. here we go swinging-into the accessibility forest again! i was actually amazed it took this long.

]]> By: Simon Pioli https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14969 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14969 Nice twist on a feature I’m not keen on at all.
Captcha tests are difference between an accessible website and one that can only be visited by sighted, non-colour-blind users who happen to have images enabled…

That isn’t to say I don’t see the benefits in them… Spam is immediately cut from forums, phoney accounts are reduced from web-based email systems etc etc…

So, how do you maximise your potential visitors while keeping out the unwanted bots out?

]]> By: Ash Haque https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14968 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14968 Considering using that type of captcha for your own site? :-P

]]> By: Bruce Boughton https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14967 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14967 Patrick, I think you’ve got your dependies the wrong way round. The Asirra site clearly cites HotCaptcha as an inspiration.

I couldn’t switch to men to test out my skills on them, but I fared well on women.

I don’t think this is really a viable method for big sites such as MSN, BBC, etc. as it’s not very PC. The cat/dog thing though…

]]> By: sam hotchkiss https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14966 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14966 so… i’ve tried 4 times and can’t get it to think that i’m human.

maybe they’re looking for “who’s skinny and slutty” not “who’s hot”

]]> By: Sean S https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14965 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14965 By: Patrick Collins https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/security-by-sexiness-the-hot-or-not-captcha#comment-14964 Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-14964 I’m thinking that this is an adaption of this MS Research project which I came across the other day. They are using cats and dogs and partnered with Petfinder.org to use their database of pets.

http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/

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