CAPTCHAS broken at Cochin
By Ria Sharma

A large number of websites use the Captchas technology test to distinguish between humans and robots used by spammers.

Any kind of organized activity to break Captchas is illegal and can get you banned from a website.  And worse.

New York Times has just published an article on how spammers are hiring people in India, Bangladesh and China to bypass the Captchas security check.  People are being paid a paltry $1.20 for each 1000 broken captchas.

While you would think that people involved in this activity would prefer a low profile, a Kerala based firm went on record with New York Times to admit their past involvement

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That view was confirmed by an executive at one south Indian outsourcing company that advertises its captcha-solving prowess on a Web site. The executive, Dileep Paveri, said his firm had stopped offering the service because it was not very profitable.

His company, SBL, which is based in Cochin, got about $200 a month in revenue for each of the 10 employees it had hired to decipher the puzzles on behalf of a Sri Lankan client.

“We found that it’s not worth doing,” said Mr. Paveri, a manager in SBL’s business process outsourcing and graphics unit. Moreover, he added, “after some time, the productivity of people comes down because it’s a monotonous job. They lose their interest.”
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Such honesty by the Cochin-based SBL is admirable.  But will such a public admission not harm it in the longer term?