Little things that irk you.. (no swearing please)

[Flabio]

Unless you're signed to the telephone preference service, then your number is public knowledge whether you ever use it or not.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

It can take a little while to kick in once registered, but after that if you still get them then they're actually breaking the law...

[koopatroopa90]

I got a call today from a bloody indian claiming to be from a company called 'Online Security'

"but you get free ring-ding!"


Seriously though, gf's Grandad fell for one of the tw*ts - mainly as he had actually just bought his first laptop that week! They took over his PC, he said the cursor was moving all over the place but realised something was fishy when they started asking for his bank details and hung up. Naturally the laptop has been wiped clean now so no real harm done but I bet some people do hand details over.

[Mayhem]

TPS only works against companies in the UK. Most of these operate outside the country and hence are not covered at all...

[Daragon]

CAPTCHA image verification is used to prove you're a human and not just a bot that might be programmed to maliciously flood the server with requests. Because computers can't read pictures see (except when they can, like with optical character recognition).

Also when you see the 'reCaptcha - Stop spam, read books' logo next to one, youre actually converting a scanned version of an old piece of literature into digital format. And you don't have to bother with the punctuation either.

So basically they do have a lot of purpose.

I wish I could be more sympathetic towards them - for a case in point, try registering an account here http://forums.ffshrine.org/ You can make a fun game out of it, see how many attempts it requires for the stupid bloody thing to accept. Secondly, it uses recaptcha, but for the life of me I've never heard the words nixesi or averepos or Ikezawa used in a sentence before (I'm assuming those are the "words" the wretched system wants me to input anyway).

Go ahead, give it a go - get your friends involved and see if you can beat each others high score!

[Dogg Thang]

I'm totally with you on this Daragon. I remember a while back there was a site I had registered with years ago and had long since forgotten any passwords I used. So I went to use the helpful 'forgotten your password?' function. After about 83 attempts to decipher the jumble of colours and lines, I gave up. Was never going to get it.

I don't mind the concept. But if even a human doesn't stand a chance at getting it right, it's complete pox and should burn in website hell.

The worst ones are the ones that make you fill out a bunch of details, you get it wrong and then it doesn't retain what you filled in.

[randombs]

I also hate when the session gets mucked up or something and even if you're entering the correct word it still fails because it's expecting the previous word. Happens quite a bit for me with Gmail if I get the wv wrong the first time. I have to refresh the page to get it working again.

The problem with these is they have to make the writing look ridiculous as OCR tech is advancing all the time. I suppose the next step would be to animate the individual letters to hide them even more. It'd be like Brain Training

As for recaptcha, I googled nixesi, averepos and Ikezawa and got results for each, just not in English, so if it's multi-lingual, that explains it. Alternatively, the words could be quotes from other langauges used in certain books.

[speedlolita]

Go ahead, give it a go - get your friends involved and see if you can beat each others high score!

2nd time here. lol

[Flabio]

The best captcha stuff I've seen is where it gives you five images of animals and asks things like 'which ones are kittens?'.

[prinnysquad]

I just press the little 'reload' button until I find one I can actually have a go at.

[toythatkills]

I just assume that I'm a robot and so don't bother.

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

"but you get free ring-ding!"

He he!, yeah but altho he was calling from 'Internet Securitings' he didnt know which 'Internet Service Providings' I was with

[EJG1980]

He he!, yeah but altho he was calling from 'Internet Securitings' he didnt know which 'Internet Service Providings' I was with

Sounds like dialogue from a Carry On film, except without the double entendres

[toythatkills]

I'd put my securitings in her service providings.

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

I'd put my securitings in her service providings.

"its so big you have to take it in monthly installments!!"

[kryss]

Laundry machines that are extremely picky about what coinage they accept.