Why Are Captchas Case Sensitive?
Why is it so many captchas are case sensitive – does it really matter if I enter ‘E’ or ‘e’?
As well, have you noticed how often the letters are uppercase, so not only do you need to fiddle with the captchas in the first place, but you have to hit the Shift key?
Why not use lowercase? After all, if programmers made either way valid, do the spammers REALLY win?
The fact is, if you include upper- and- lowercase, and digits, you’re looking at 26+26+10=62 possibilities per character, instead of 26+10=36 if lowercase and uppercase case are allowed – almost 50% fewer choices. The solution? Just add a character!
Here’s the math: a 4-character case sensitive code has 14 million possibilities – but a 5 character case-insensitive one has SIXTY MILLION.
Computers are supposed to make it easier for us, so is it really a security issue that forces me to remember the Shift key when typing in captchas – or programming laziness?
