Email account registration -- what about bots?

Not too long ago, the procedure to creating an email account used to be easy. Of late, it has become kinda like a test for your eyes. You have to type in the word or number in the image to complete the registration.

Some people wonder why this is and most often say -- 'this is to ensure that there are no computerised registration'. The idea was to differentiate humans from bots. Thus was invented what is now known as captchas (completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart).

This procedure can not be tempered with easily as each failed attempt (at typing the word) generates a new word.

There are many such captchas in use now, Gimpy is one, which Yahoo! uses.

This report mentions how smart "spammers" have become. It mentions a certain scam wherein the spammers are manipulating computer users into doing their dirty work.

Quoting from the report:


The bogus emails have the characteristics shown here:

Subject: Automatic Yahoo identifier completion

Body text:

Dear Yahoo! Member,

We must check that your Yahoo! ID was registered by real people. So, to help Yahoo! prevent automated registrations, please click on this link and complete code verification process:

[ URL removed ]

Thank you.


Details

Email filtering firm MessageLabs reports that the scam emails contain a fake Yahoo.com URL which redirect through a Google URL three times, in order to obfuscate the path of the link, before landed surfers on a fake Yahoo! web address. This page loads a real Yahoo! help page with legitimate information explaining the code verification process, followed by a fake pop-up window which shows the user a Yahoo picture ID and asks them to enter a code.


So users, do be very careful and on the highest alert, Red!