Sal wrote:
> "VanguardLH" wrote:
>
>> Sal wrote:
>>
>>> I am using outlook as mal program and my AOL account on it but I am
>>> getting this error too often which requires me to log to aol, do
>>> image challenge and then use outlook for a few hours until i getthe
>>> same message again and have to go to the same routine.
>>
>> The CAPTCHA security interrupt will interfere with logging in using
>> either a local e-mail client or when using their webmail interface.
>> Nothing you can do if AOl has decided to spew this security
>> interrupt more than a couple times per year. Complain to AOL.
>> Maybe they're targeting your account. Have you changed your
>> password just in case someone is abusing your account?
>
> Thanks. I have spent hours trying to get help from aol but no help
> has arrived. I have looked at their site ut dont see help there
> either. You mentioned CAPTCHA, what is this?
Never heard of Google?
http://www.google.com/search?q=captcha
Yahoo, Hotmail, and it looks like also AOL will insert a CAPTCHA page
during the login.
CAPTCHA = Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart
(
www.acronymfinder.com works to find definitions for acronyms)
Hey, I didn't come up with this acronym.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA
The security page or insert will show you an image. It is usually (but
sometimes not well) designed to thwart being scanned. There is no text
in the content but humans will see a pattern within the image that looks
like text. They then enter those characters into an input box. If they
guess correct, you pass their test. In trying to make the embedded text
hard to scan out of the image, like with OCR, it can be quite difficult
at times to read their image. Rather than use an image, some site
prefer to use a math test. They ask you to input the result of a simple
math equation (can't be made too difficult considering some morons
wandering the Internet). They may use text or an image (which is much
easier to read) to show the text for the equation. You do some addition
and subtraction to get the answer, and if you input the correct answer
then they figure a human entered the value.
They will occasionally spew out this security interruption to make sure
a human is using their service and not some spambot. However, because
the login has this interfering CAPTCHA process, the login won't proceed
until the test is completed. That means your local e-mail client will
fail its login until you use the webmail interface to your e-mail
account to pass the CAPTCHA test. Once passed, your e-mail client or
their webmail client will work normally for the login process - until
the next time they want to ensure a human is using their service.
At one time, I had Hotmail interfere with their CAPTCHA test somewhere
around 3 times in 2 weeks and then it went away for many months, then
reappeared once and disappeared again for so long that I don't remember
when it last happened. Yahoo Mail nailed me for 6 times in one week,
disappeared for just over 6 months, reoccured once, and it was 8 months
before it happened again. These were for free accounts. Don't know if
they do this for paid accounts (since spammers aren't going to pay to
spam). But then I don't know what algorithm they use for when they
determine they will check if a human is using their service.
There's even social engineering going on to get past the CAPTCHA test
and let spammers create and abuse free accounts. The one that I read
about (but this can be used anywhere) was, I think, at some porn site
where users had to do a CAPTCHA test to get at some content. The image
they were shown was actually retrieved by their program from Gmail's
CAPTCHA login process. When the user entered the text from the CAPTCHA
image at the porn site, their program entered that text at the Gmail
site to complete the signup.
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