Category: the Rant Board
So this morning I came across a problem that, well, let's face it most of us have come across during our trawling of the World wide web. Image verification. unfortunately, as I was only dealing with a massively popular website with millions of users across the globe it was clearly too much to ask that they should have an audio capture. Facebook's mobile site incidentally. So how to get around this thorny issue. I had a couple of options, the website sonola.com was my first port of call. They are in fairness good. You have to download the graphic to your machine as a JPG file and then upload it to them for inspection. With in 90 seconds they come back and tell you what you need to know. The only trouble with such a system is that although it is reasonably quick, it wasn't quick enough for Facebook. I tried twice and on both occasions was told that I had taken too long inputting the digits and should try again. Plan B then, I have Firefox installed on this computer of mine and I'd read on these boards before about Webvism, so I decided that it was time to give that a try instead.
Now this is where I got really annoyed. You have to sign up for this service for one thing. Fair enough, they don't want to be dealing with spammers 24-7 anymore than the rest of us do. However you can't just sign up I quickly discovered. You need an invite. Not a problem though because you can request an invitation. So I did this. Now as a part of this invitation request they ask for an email address, your full name and some additional information. however, then make no effort what so ever to clarify exactly what is meant by additional information. A little flummoxed by this I told them that I lived in Illinois, and was 30 years old. So at this point they have my email address, my full name from which I assume they should be able to deduce my sex, they have my age and my location. So I submitted my invitation request and awaited my invite. They then sent me an email essentially saying that I hadn't told them enough about myself, still while completely failing to inform me how much information, or indeed what information would be enough. What the heck do they want to know? What foods I like to eat? Which hand I use to wipe my ass with? My penis size? Please tell me because I'm a little baffled at this point. I need help reading graphics, that is all, I don't want to enter into a long-term relationship with these people. They also said in this email that they sent me that they wanted to know what I'd be using the service for. Now one moment here, so far as I'm aware you offer to read graphics in order to assist with getting around image verification so what on earth do you think I want to use your service for? Making cups of tea perhaps? To help me learn how to make tree houses maybe? For heavens sake, instead of going through this rigmarole of asking inane question for god knows what reason, would you not perhaps consider introducing some kind of image verification system to your site to filter out spammers. Pah.
Dan.
Wow! I've never heard of anything so crazy in my life. Asking personal information like that, demanding more and then asking why you're using the system? That's insane. I have half a mind to use a fake name and invent some really raunchy shit just to piss them off. There's no reason on Earth why anyone should have to go through all of that just to get a stupid code varification. Sonola has the right idea and I totally commend them for their work. Are you doing the quick one, where you can take a picture of the screen and just send it off, or the other one where you have to use that Paint program or whatever?
Well penis size might get their attention ... pun intended ... but all you need is an invite. So PM me and I will see that you get one. Further, I find Facebook's Captchas to be buggy on their mobile site so use the main one when you need to use a captcha. You can also have you or a friend texted by Facebook, then enter the verification number into the text box. In our house my daughter is the only one with the cell phone and I'm paying for it, so a quick text message and read dad the code wasn't too much to ask ... lol ... but this morning before I started work I was checking Facebook - I'm still new to it - from my PAC Mate, and went to respond to my sister's message in Inbox and it wanted a captcha. So had to reply to her later using Firefox (no complaints there) but wonder why FaceBuggy allowed me to reply to friends before (after I verified with the text message), but with her, as a friend who sent an email, it did not. That's not because they're inaccessible; they just have bugs ...
Anyway, PM me with your email info and I'll request an invitation. They did owe you a response but in all fairness it may have been a bot looking for certain key words. Maybe blind or visually impaired would have been one, but that's a poor response from them anyway. I do know invitations work; you'll get a link from them on my behalf and when you follow it you can just sign up, and no they don't have a captcha.
Another thing: I'd consider turning everything off in the Web Vissum extension except the captcha checker unless you like a sandboxed experience. It's not that they're doing anything wrong; it's just some content like on facebook and I think even Amazon will get stilted, if not blocked. The idea is to improve all sorts of accessibility but I like things more open ...
I think asking what you would use it for is a valid question to filter out spam, but asking your name is pure bs. I got an invitation from someone so I had no problem signing up, and I use it frequently so I hope you can get past this initial bad experience and use it too, because it's really accurate and fast. As for the other features, the only one that really annoys me is that sound that plays when a page loads. It's a loud click, and it will do it as many times as the page refreshes. So if you're on a page that auto-refreshes a lot, it will click a bunch of times. I turned that off after awhile.
So Dan, which hand do you wipe your ass with?
That's what I was wondering too.
Hmmm, I don't recall going through that kind of nightmare when I installed Webvisum a few months ago. But I had someone who was very familiar with it helping me, and she sent me the invite. Also, they may have changed it since then. How annoying!
They must have, because I certainly didn't get that when I initially signed up. Then again that was about a year ago. And now I have Window-Eyes, FIrefox and Webvisum installed on every computer I might be using. Until reacently that included a machine that formerlly belonged to my father. Now it's just my laptop. But I definitely don't recall needing an invite to join at the time I did.
I wonder if the person asking Dan for all that personal information was authorized to do so? I mean what if it's not company policy and someone was just trying to get more info than they needed? With all the identity theft going on, I'd be very reluctant to give my whole name and the other stuff they were asking Dan.
I can't figure out how to actually get it to work.
Yeah, I didn't see why they needed my name.
It's a good point you raise there Becky, I'd love to tell you which hand I wipe with but as you so rightly point out, that information might be used to defraud me at a later date. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep that highly sort after item of knowledge a secret.
I'm probably just cutting off my nose to spite my face here but, these people don't have the right to know all these things about me so far as I am concerned. They offered a service that I wished to avail myself of. That was really all there was too it for me. They apparently see things differently so separate ways we shall go. Certainly I'll not bow down to a bunch of little Nazi's who seem to think that just because they can read something that I can't due to my disability that that in some way gives them the access to every detail of my life.
As I say, I'm sure that me not now using there service is considerably more irritating to me than it is to them, but at least I come away from the experience with my principals in tact, and I suppose that has to count for something right?
Dan.
The problem they ran into was spammers were trying to sign up and use them for a captcha service. This is a bit ghetto-ish as many blind people probably don't have 'blind connections', and I personally am grateful to the person who told me about it, but the best way in is now through invite and they won't ask you a thing. It's a tricky business because the real guilty party here is the spammers who would abuse a service like this which was designed to assist users with an increasingly-important aspect of the web. Personally, and this isn't accessibility only, but I'm in favor of those widgets that ask the user to respond e.g. identify data as dissimilar - by check boxes or whatever - which is harder for a bot to do.
Dan, A couple of months ago, I had a similar experience to that of yours when trying to sign up for Webvisum.
I also had to request an invite, and later i also received an email telling me i didn't tell them enough about myself. So, all I wrote back, was that I'm blind and wanted to use the app to solve those
annoying captchas. So eventually i got what i wanted, and am using the thingie whenever is necessary.
i've similar experience in a couple months ago, and i can't figure it why. i refuse to give them further information that i've did, and never heard from them again. i told them the reason i wanting to use their service because i'm visually impaired...
it will be great if there's a way to get out of this thinggy, it will make life simpler, instead of asking sighted help when come to reading web capture.
Oh that sucks you had such a bad experience. I got an invite and am very glad to be using their service. Thank God I didn't have to sign up myself. :)
*nods* I also got an invite, no hastle.
Gentlefolk and otherwise: I offer to invite anyone on this site as I was once invited. Pm me, so that I can get you set up. Right or wrong, they're trying to prevent spammers; like you, I'd rather not do anything ghetto, but the multilevel marketers and other spammers trying to cheat and use Webvisum are only trying to keep the service alive without spammers. Personally, I'd rather see sites move to a minor language-based test somech as check the box that's different than the rest) because that's ultimately harder to break than spammers creating OCR techniques, but this is what we have now. I will do all I can to get anyone signed up who sends me a Pm including an email address.
Wow. They really have changed since I signed up. I'm glad I joined when I did.