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Richard Clayton writes:
So one could get appropriate skills for about $10 or so a week [labour
rates are higher for towns with broadband]. For a 50 hour week that
means you're paying about 20 cents an hour.
I've never tried solving CAPTCHAs at speed, so I couldn't predict how
fast I could do them for hours on end. But it looks to me that the cost
is definitely going to be in fractions of a cent/solution.
Of course you need to add in the cost of the connectivity and the kit
($100 laptops anybody?) but people who think of CAPTCHAs in terms of the
hourly charging rate of their attorney (or plumber!) are entirely
missing the point.
By the way, I heard a few years back of a case of large-scale
CAPTCHA-decode farming, utilising teenagers in internet cafes in Thailand.
Thailand and India both typically feature at least one internet cafe in
every large town, and having spent time travelling in both countries and
visiting those facilities, I can tell you that the local teens are regular
and willing inhabitants. ;) Equipment really isn't a problem.
The UI apparently was that account-signup bots would proxy the CAPTCHA
images to the kid's screen, who was otherwise occupied IM'ing pals,
playing online games, etc. Solve a CAPTCHA, get back to IM'ing.
(This was all anecdotal, nothing on the record etc., unfortunately.)
Let's assume that over the course of a year Amazon.com emails 10
million customers. I'll say that 5% of these sub-addresses are
deactivated without the customers bothering to notify amazon. I'll
say that it costs Amazon 5 cents to decode a CAPTCHA (fifty times
as expensive as what I assumed the spammer would have to pay!).
actually Amazon are experimenting with the Mechanical Turk... so they
might be able to manage Third World rates :)
Agreed, I was just thinking how much the Mechanical Turk system
reminded me of the Thai CAPTCHA farming ;)
- --j.
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