It is more occasions than we would like, we have faced a series of puzzles or small visual challenges when, for example, posting a comment on social networks, downloading a file or even browsing Google, and it is that the classic boxes that we must check to confirm that we are not a robot are practically anywhere on the Internet.
So if you’ve ever wondered exactly what this is and why the proof that we’re not a robot really appears, this is basically used to prevent bots from causing a lot of problems on the Internet.
And it is that one of the main effects of the Internet is automation, and with it the creation of bots that are in charge of exploiting certain tasks doing them automatically something that, although it can be interesting and efficient in certain cases, can become a danger especially if we talk about spam.
And it is that bots can cause many problems on the Internet such as causing more fraud, promoting hacking, posting spam comments or even buying a large set of products to resell, among others.
So, for this, computer researchers in the 90s invented a technique called CAPTCHA(Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) that its correct translation into Spanish would be “Test de Public and automatic Turing to distinguish computers from humans”.
So this technique prevents bots from entering information on websites.
CAPTCHAs originated as images with letters, numbers or words written in wavy and sometimes blurry fonts, which for a human being can sometimes be difficult to decipher.
However in 2007 a project called reCAPTCHA began using its CAPTCHA test as a way to perform meaningful tasks. Later in 2009 Google acquired reCAPTCHA and began using it to decode Google Street View addresses.
In any case today, when we solve a reCAPTCHA challenge, we’re helping Google train its machine learning models by showing us objects in multiple photos that computers might have trouble recognizing.
This way, when you face this type of visual challenges, you already know the reason for their existence, although in certain cases it may turn out that solving one of these challenges can be the most boring thing you do all day.