[pmwiki-users] Hacking - Turing Test - Captchas

[Marcus]

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:34:23 +0200
"Erik Haagensen" <erik.haa at gmail.com> wrote:

> the solution with the open and given password seems genious !!

The basic idea of a public password to thwart spambots is mentioned in
the pmwiki security docs, but I know it is a lot to digest, I had to
read it a few times.

What I did on one site was to take the idea a step further. It's a
sort of Turing Test for groups with a shared interest. This is a movie
site so we can presume that all visitors have knowledge of the two
films the site is about. So the password prompt explains that the
password is made up of two names in the movie. This really ensures that
only people interested in these movies have access. You could ask
something more general of course.

In any case, it is better in my opinion than captchas, which
unless speech enabled, lock out the blind and people with poor sight,
the elderly in particular. On that subject, the captcha in pmwiki
should be speech enabled for accessibility.


Marcus