CAPTCHA: History + Uses
CAPTCHA : (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) Ever typed gibberish to prove you're not a robot? Inspired by an episode of "No Stupid Questions," let's get to know the mind behind CAPTCHA, Luis von Ahn! Who is Luis von Ahn? He was a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University when he attended a talk by the chief scientist of Yahoo. The talk was about 10 problems that the company was facing, and one of them was spam emails. Inspired, he collaborated with his professor, Manuel Blum, and invented CAPTCHA – the distorted text test that keeps robots in check. Why Yahoo had a hard time with spam? Free email services like Yahoo's were a breeding ground for spam. With no barrier to entry, bots could easily create massive numbers of email accounts in minutes. These fake accounts were then used to bombard users with unwanted emails. This ongoing battle with spam ultimately led to the creation of...