Easy does it: More usable CAPTCHAs

Elie Bursztein, Angelika Moscicki, Celine Fabry, Steven Bethard, John C. Mitchell, Dan Jurafsky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

Websites present users with puzzles called CAPTCHAs to curb abuse caused by computer algorithms masquerading as people. While CAPTCHAs are generally effective at stopping abuse, they might impair website usability if they are not properly designed. In this paper we describe how we designed two new CAPTCHA schemes for Google that focus on maximizing usability. We began by running an evaluation on Amazon Mechanical Turk with over 27,000 respondents to test the usability of different feature combinations. Then we studied user preferences using Google's consumer survey infrastructure. Finally, drawing on the insights gleaned during those studies, we tested our new captcha schemes first on Mechanical Turk and then on a fraction of production traffic. The resulting scheme is now an integral part of our production system and is served to millions of users. Our scheme achieved a 95.3% human accuracy, a 6.7% improvement.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2014
Subtitle of host publicationOne of a CHInd - Conference Proceedings, 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages2637-2646
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781450324731
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014 - Toronto, ON, Canada
Duration: Apr 26 2014May 1 2014

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto, ON
Period4/26/145/1/14

Keywords

  • CAPTCHA
  • Empirical Methods
  • Quantitative Usability Testing and Evaluation
  • Security
  • User Studies
  • World Wide Web

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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