Rigid Security Measures Induce Spammers to Outsource their Work

Spammers are choosing more economical and affordable means of dealing with the rigid security measures. According to experts, these spammers are actually outsourcing their work.

In the developing countries like China, India and Bangladesh, people get money from smart spammers to clear up captcha tests. Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.

In these captcha tests, Web users have to prove themselves for not being spam-generating robots. They are supposed to type in a series of "semi obscured characters".

Online exchange websites such as Frelancer.com weekly offer such projects, and they pay 80 Cents to $1.20 per 1,000 deciphered boxes.

Notably, scores of people residing in the developing nations, particularly the Asian continent, are paid to solve these puzzles. Some of them seem very superior that even involves brokers and middlemen.

This work is promoted or advertized via numerous websites which have a cooperative tie-up with the spammers. The information is transmitted through vast networks of friends.

However, for a mere amount of money, doing such an infertile work might appear idiotic to the developed nationals, but for the people in developing economies, the money paid for it is quite sufficient.

Moreover, with this task of decoding going on, executives at the Internet companies such as Google say that this development does not make them anxious.

According to Macduff Hughes, an Engineering Director at Google, the fact that human solvers who are paid will be successful in solving captchas can't be denied, as per the statement published by nytimes.com on April 25, 2010. He added that the aim of the company is that mass creation of accounts should not attract spammers. Indeed, the fact that people are being paid by the spammers to solve captchas clearly proves the effective functioning of the tool.

As stated by Mr. von Ahn, a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and a pioneer in making captchas, the cost incurred in employing people, even though it seems economic, shall confine the limit of such activities to spammers only, who have devised new ways to earn huge bucks, as per the statement published by nytimes.com on April 25, 2010.

Related article: Rigged RealMedia Files Install Trojans

» SPAMfighter News - 5/8/2010