In its latest salvo in the fight against spam, Facebook has filed a patent application for a “social CAPTCHA” system.
CAPTCHAs, which ask people to re-enter a code displayed visually, have become well known as the main system for blocking spammers on the web. Facebook believes the social CAPTCHA will prevent spam even more effectively. The picture, right, is of Facebook’s current CAPTCHA system, not of a social CAPTCHA.
Social CAPTCHAs ask individuals questions they should know the answers to – such as identifying who a peson in a picture is. If they can, they have effectively validated their identity. You can read the details of the patent application here.
This isn’t exactly new as Facebook has been testing the system for months, however Facebook is now attempting to patent the system. Interestingly enough, Google happens to be the owner of the most popular text-based CAPTCHA system, reCAPTCHA.
The idea is that if hackers obtain access to a Facebook user’s account, they would be unable to answer the questions posed by the social CAPTCHA.
Go Rumors points out that this would not help if the person who is fraudulently accessing the account is in the same network of friends as they would then know the answers. This is true but I don’t think this is a problem for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I would guess that the vast majority of compromised accounts are hacked by a third party, unknown to the user. Secondly, it’s still an improvement on an ordinary CAPTCHA, since ordinary CAPTCHAs only protect against bots and can be theoretically answered by any human.
Personally I might find a social CAPTCHA easier to use, simply because I have trouble with ordinary CAPTCHAs. The numbers and letters often look ambiguous to me and I find I frequently have to make several attempts before I answer it correctly. I’m much better at recognizing my friends faces – as long as their profile pics are actually of them and not their baby or pet dog. However, I would guess social CAPTCHAs might make life difficult for some people, especially those that like to friend a lot of people that they don’t actually know and also anyone with visual impairment.
In fact, this photo (via ReadWriteWeb) is a perfect example of what can go wrong with a social CAPTCHA. It was provided by author Eleanor Herman who is Facebook friends with a lot of her readers. Even if she did recognize all of her readers, I can’t imagine that any of them actually look like gummi bears!
This is a silly idea. Some people have Facebook accounts for bands, or they are a local celebrity with a ton of friends, and may not know each friend personally!
Comment by Amy Lynn — September 9, 2010 @ 7:55 pm
Not everyone knows every friend by name some people have thousands of friends
Comment by wayne — September 9, 2010 @ 8:05 pm
I guess tgey gaceb;t heard. CAPTCHA SUCKS and it doesn't work no matter what form. You want a damn spam free site? Turn it back into a .edu only site. None of the ones I'm on have, nor need captcha.
Comment by guest — September 9, 2010 @ 11:41 pm
True but I guess Facebook's stance would be that they should be using pages rather than personal profiles for this purpose.
Comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons — September 10, 2010 @ 12:35 am
I guess Facebook could solve its spam problem by closing the site down completely too, but it's not going to happen, is it?!
Comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons — September 10, 2010 @ 12:37 am
1. It's dumb idea, as so many people have pictures that look nothing like them – can be fancy dress, baby pic, slogan etc. Many actually leave their pic blank.
2. For many accounts you can check out all the friends pics anyway, if the security is lenient.
3. Would be so much easier to have say a password. But wait, we have that already!
4. Trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist, and causing more problems than it solves
Comment by Richard Boult — September 10, 2010 @ 4:25 am
I had to face this once when logging in while on vacation. It was a nightmare, it kept picking great photos of people wearing halloween costumes, one blurry pic of someone who’s clearly in uniform but too far away to be identified, and one of a very close friend who was wearing sunglasses and a ball cap with her hair down, obscuring 80% of her face. I actually had to ask for help from people I was on vacation with, and someone who knows NONE of my friends correctly guessed them all for me. Beyond worthless!
Comment by mmm — September 10, 2010 @ 5:55 am
First, I would agree that Facebook profiles are NOT to be used for brand purposes. That’s not their purpose, and those using it as such aren’t using them correctly.
Second, it’s likely that Facebook will be smart about it and use an algorithm to only pick people who are in a lot of pictures with you or who communicate with you frequently, and would also use a face-recognition algorithm to pick those pictures where the face is visible.
Finally, it is highly likely that, as the (mockup?) includes, there is a “next photo” button that would allow the person to change to a new photo if the current one is not a good photo or is mistagged.
Comment by Nick Bauer — September 10, 2010 @ 8:33 am
with more and more spammy apps, spammy fake friends and lack of user controlled granular privacy Facebook is becoming less like a cool place to hang out and more of an urban ghetto. AOL for Web 2.0
Comment by offbeatmammal — September 10, 2010 @ 10:34 am
I'm guessing that they're not going to just pull a random person that you've never communicated with before. There would have to be some sort of algorithm to determine who you "should" know like the people that you send messages back and forth with or post multiple times on their wall. I'm sure that Facebook knows you're not going to immediately recognize every single person in your friends list.
They have been testing it and I'm sure these issues have come up in the beta test.
Comment by Jared Detroit — September 10, 2010 @ 10:43 am
And that's why Fb is going to fall by the wayside and be overrun by garbage, like myspace. FB is the new myspace. They'll never win the watr on spam. The only sites that have done that are restricted ones, like for .edu only. You screw up, your email is blacklisted. That's why I'm on those sites. No one wants to screw up by posting spam, and no stupid app developers having access to website code.
Comment by guest — September 10, 2010 @ 5:43 pm
Another example of Facebook failing with a picture: http://imgur.com/IdLl1.jpg
Comment by @IsoNick — September 14, 2010 @ 2:32 pm
Facebook is starting to roll out the "social CAPTCHA" mechanism to additional features of the site. Here are a few additional photo challenges that show some of the challenges the users may have when asked to recognize their friends: http://blog.zeltser.com/post/1258010402/facebook-...
Comment by @lennyzeltser — October 8, 2010 @ 4:22 pm
ghgf
Comment by facebook fans — June 13, 2011 @ 6:55 am