Chess CAPTCHA – a serious defence against spammers?

CAPTCHAs – the questions that a website asks you to answer to prove if you’re a human being or not – come in many shapes and forms.

Although they most commonly ask you to decipher some words hidden in a distorted graphic, there are more elaborate versions which can ask you to solve some complicated mathematical calculation or ask you to add toppings to a pizza in an attempt to stop automated bots leaving spammy messages.

As a keen chess player, I was interested to see this CAPTCHA being used on an online chess forum…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.