# Salona Vs. Webvism

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Sunday, 03-Jan-2010 20:47:31

Hi All:
Our Mortgage Company has this new security feature involving a captcha each time I sign in. Two solutions I know of short of having them automatically deduct the amount each month from my bank account are using the two options in the topic title. I'm wondering what your experiences have been, and what your thoughts are?
Thanks in advance,
Lou

## Post 2 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Sunday, 03-Jan-2010 22:20:12

Personally, I'd just use the automatic payment option. It's much easier in the longrun. In any case, I've used Solona but not Web Visim. I find Solona to be very easy to use, especially if you download their program that helps you take a picture of the capcha. The results are very fast and accurate. The only downside, is that sometimes, there isn't an opperator online. Still, it's free and I highly recommend it. It only works with Windows, to my knowledge, so if you're using another os, you may have to look for something else.

## Post 3 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 3:40:41

The fact that we need to depend on human intervention is one of the things that makes me cautious. Two questions along these lines. First, how long, on average do you need to wait for a response? Second, does the system have a way of letting you know that there's nobody home to take your request so to speak?
Thanks,
Lou

## Post 4 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 8:10:40

It takes less than a minute. If no one's there, it'll say that no operators are standing by.

## Post 5 by Brooke (I just keep on posting!) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 9:03:07

I've only used WebVisum. One of its limitations is that it only works with Firefox, but that, to me, isn't a big deal. Some people have said they run into Captchas that WebVisum won't read, but so far I've been lucky and haven't found any of them. But it's pretty easy, only takes about 30 seconds for it to produce results. I like it because you don't actually have to wait for a person to help you.

## Post 6 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 12:05:02

Precisely. And the fact that it only works with Firefox was no biggy for me since I hate Internet Explorer with a passion. As for Captchas that stump the program I've only VERY ocasionally run into that and even then I tried again and it figured it out. Needless to say I'm a wholehearted Web Visum supporter. I didn't even try Salona for the very reason that it's run by humans. If you have an urgent need to solve a Captcha (not that there's really likely to be that kind of a situation), you shouldn't have to wait until someone's there. At least with Webvisum there's two simple keystrokes. Control+Alt+6 to submit the Captcha, then when it's copied to the clipboard Control+V when you're sitting on the proper edit field to paste it in. And it lets you know both when the image has been submitted for deciphering and then when it's been copied to your clipboard. You do have to wait about thirty seconds between submitions if for whatever reason something goes wrong, but generally I really like the program.

## Post 7 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 13:17:46

I'll have to try that. Just out of curiosity, how was sign up for you? I've heard some pretty nasty things about signing up with them. Of course, I don't know for sure, since I haven't used their service, so please don't take my word on this one. Also, though this is slightly off-topic, why do you hate Internet Explorer?

## Post 8 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 17:20:01

Thanks for all your responses. I look forward to seeing brian's answer.

## Post 9 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 20:43:32

Well when I signed up it was before they required invites. And the process was actually quite painless. Just supply name, Email and a password (or that might have been generated for you), and you were ready to install the program and log in. And I haven't had any trouble with it. As for why I hate internet explorer, part of it is the Web Visum thing since there's no version for IE. But also it's because ever since I switched to Firefox I've noticed a definite decrease in problems with picking up viruses and spyware and things. Firefox seems to have better security built right into the program than IE.

## Post 10 by GreenTurtle (Music is life. Love. Vitality.) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 20:52:12

Agreed with Bryan there, not to mention Firefox tends to load pages faster. I use Web Vissum and have had no problems with it.

## Post 11 by theJournalist (move over school!) on Monday, 04-Jan-2010 23:54:37

personally I hate firefox with a passion for two simple reasons:
1. It doesn't make the clicky sound when you click a link which IE does. I need that sound to know when I clicked on a link +when a program is clicking on.
2. Because Firefox can't stop loading a page and render it. With IE, I could load a page halfway through and still read it with JAWS. Not with Firefox, it just doesn't show anything if you hit escape. Remember, I have a slower internet connection (3g at about 10 kbps)
Otherwise, regarding the topic. I like Webvisum better too, and there were only a few times where it couldn't figure out a captcha no matter how hard I tried. It's pretty cool actually, and I hope that spammers won't discover the trick behind it, because they could also use the same system. It must be like the K-nfb reader, where it scans the image...

## Post 12 by GreenTurtle (Music is life. Love. Vitality.) on Tuesday, 05-Jan-2010 1:08:54

Hi, if you used Web Vissum you should have had a clicking sound when using Firefox. In fact it's much more pronounced than it is in IE. There's a way to change that setting, so I'm not sure if you did, but it's definitely in the Web Vissum settings that you can have a sound for when a page loads.

## Post 13 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Tuesday, 05-Jan-2010 9:28:20

That's definitely true. In fact that's one of the things, to get slightly off topic, that I really don't like about Facebook. I can never tell when a new page loades because it doesn't do anything. You have to refresh the screen. And since the mobile version of the site is becoming less and less accessible by all accounts I finally just deactivated my account.

## Post 14 by jessmonsilva (Taking over the boards, one topic at a time.) on Tuesday, 05-Jan-2010 16:23:51

I've never used the other plug in but I definitely would go with webVisum, in fact, that's the only one I've used. I never even heard of the human operated one so that's a little intriguing. But yes, I like webVisum alot, and I like how it doesn't take long to generate the captia image for you and put it in the clipboard for you to paste. I've ran into like 2 captia's it couldn't figure out but for the most part it's worked for me. I have both browsers internet explorer and firefox, I use IE for my day to day use but when I need to go on a page with captias then I just load it up in firefox.
Hope this helps.
Jess

## Post 15 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Tuesday, 05-Jan-2010 18:28:01

I come at this from an I.T. perspective here, and my browser preferences known as they might be, aren't in this:
If you do choose to use Solona *make sure* that you never fill in any identifiable info, and that the page the captcha is on contains no identifiable info, before the picture is taken.
The snapshot is a screen shot or something close; it's not struct-based, the user looks at the page and sees the captcha image *and everything else you put on there!!!* and then submits.
Based on the speed and accuracy of Webvisum, my best educated guess is that it reads the structure, exctracts the image from the captcha widget and performs some OCR on it. I am guessing; I don't work for them and haven't attempted anything to figure out their scheme, it's just a reasonably well-educated guess.
Robots have no need to steal info; I'm not sayin' Solona's people would do that, but they're pretty open about the fact it is in fact an image, png if I remember?
So if Solona is your solution, do your captcha first ... it only takes once to be compromised and that shit is seriously hard to undo; requires the Lawlords and such to do that, not an engineerring fix. Trust a machine with your data; the worst it will do is unscrupulously mangle and totally destroy it ... lol no seriously any solution that reads the widget structure (or similar) is far safer for you than a screen shot. To non technical types all that means is that you can programmatically read specific parts of a page, a captcha being it's own 'thing' if you will comprised of several elements one of which is a harmless image that contains no user data. A screen shot is like you take a picture with a digital camera of your whole screen, which is useless by itself to a machine except it knows what colors, angles and various other units of measure (SVG) are in it; however very useful to a human that wants to read your account number, date of birth, or any other interesting data found in that picture ...
This is not a slight against Solona, I don't know or work with either company's people but the differences are vast.
You are equally safe using Solona and Webvisum if as a Solona user, you change how you fill in forms - make sure you do the Captcha before *anything else* on the form. And what does that page contain when submitting, data about you that you have not filled in yet? Don't submit a captcha to Solona if your page has data about you that you did not fill in. It's just a poster, if you willl.
The other problem with victims of identity theft is the crime happens and the victim sees the results often years later; once a credit card you never signed up for racks up enough charges and goes delinquent, but the billing address is way off somewhere else (they got yours from the page?) so you wouldn't know; maybe even the collectors don't find you but your good credit rating goes down the tubes. To that end, I would never submit a png over the Internet or anywhere which contained my data in it, any more than I'd print it off and hang it on a billboard. When your info is sent via the form itself it is encrypted, anybody on here curious about generally how this stuff works can look up user info on 128-bit encryption or SSL on Wikipedia.
Again this is no slight on Solona, just an opinion from a technological perspective.

## Post 16 by Brooke (I just keep on posting!) on Wednesday, 06-Jan-2010 9:34:13

Good points about Solona. That's one of the reasons I've never tried it.
The sign-up process for WebVisum didn't take long. I submitted my name, email, and the reasons for needing their software (my guess is that they ask this to prevent spammers). They contacted me that same day. But even if I'd had to wait a day, I'd rather do that than compromise any of my personal info by going with Solona.

## Post 17 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Wednesday, 06-Jan-2010 10:48:28

Exactly. And again there's the matter of having to wait for an operator to be "standing by" with Salona.

## Post 18 by monkeypusher69 (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Wednesday, 06-Jan-2010 13:20:13

the invite process is just as simple have someone email you an invite and follow the link fill in the info listed above and you'll be presented with the link to download and install the firefox plugin . And the security of firefox especially with other plug ins like no script and add block makes it trump Internet Explorer in my opinion.

## Post 19 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Thursday, 07-Jan-2010 18:35:16

I offer here as I have on other boards: private message me and I will get you a web visum invite. Others have made this same offer so nobody should be complaining on these boards about not being able to get in: several of us have offered to get anyone who wants it an invite, this is to add the human element to an otherwise automated process. Ideally this wouldn't be necessary, but as long as we have captchas, I would vouch for a system that reads the captcha's image and automated / not by a human.

## Post 20 by The Lil Dark Piggy (This site is so "educational") on Friday, 08-Jan-2010 8:56:52

And Mozilla firefox downloads stuff faster then IE too. Also, their mail client, Thunderbird is good as well.