Given the choice between having a human visit your website and having a machine visit your website, you would probably prefer the human.

Humans are more likely to be responsible for purchasing choices, humans are more capable of understanding what you write and coming up with reasoned replies, and humans are more likely to generate original content of their own.

Unfortunately, since computers are themselves a form of machine, you can’t just forbid all contact from other machines or you would never have anyone visit your site.

The Turing Test

Before the first computers were ever built, Alan Turing theorized that it would eventually be possible for computers to be responsible for complex choices, and taking part in conversations in a manner that at least made them appear to be capable of the same understanding and spark of originality as a real human.

He proposed a test wherein a human and a machine would both pretend to be human, and a human judge would look at the answers that each provided and determine which of the two was actually human.

Any of you who maintain a blog that allows replies has undoubtedly become intimately familiar with the Turing Test.  You take part in one every time you weed spam out from the responses to your blog posts.

Signs Of An Inhuman Poster

Here are a few of the tell tale signs that I look for to tell me when a reply is computer generated spam.

1.    There are links to pharmacies, gambling sites, or porn.
2.    The reply alternates between linking text and non-linking text in a regular pattern.
3.    Short passages throughout the post are lifted from various works of fiction.
4.    All three sentences of the response glow approval, but the content of the original post is only referred to as “this topic” or “the blog.”

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA refers to any automated process that attempts to take over the judge’s role on the Turing Test.

Often this is done by asking the visitor to identify a string of letters or a pair of words that have been distorted in some random manner.  The theory is that human pattern recognition will surpass that of a machine.

Any question that can be answered by a human but not by a machine will do.  For example, there is one CAPTCHA out there that produces 16 animal pictures, and you have to correctly identify the cats before you can post.

Counter – Countermeasures

Unfortunately, spammers are constantly looking for new ways to add their content to other people’s websites without actually taking part in the ongoing conversations.  Over time you will need to switch to more sophisticated versions of CAPTCHA if you wish to keep spammers at bay.

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