Ever encounter one of those pesky tests that ask you to identify all the pictures with crosswalks when you're just trying to snag those front row seats to the hottest concert in town? Those annoying tests are called CAPTCHA which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" as it can be seen it's quite a mouthful, which is why it's simply called CAPTCHA.
To get to the root of why you have to solve these annoying puzzles and tests, you have to learn the reason behind why they exist first and why the computer assumes you're a robot when you're not. CAPTCHAs were first made to be a test that only humans can solve to tackle a major problem back with the internet in the early 2000's, which was the fact that hackers could generate spam for hundreds of accounts or purchases. This problem may seem minor at first but it is hard to make a test where only humans can solve and a computer can only grade if it is right or wrong. CAPTCHAs were born from the realization that prehistoric computing systems had diffculity reading, especially if that text was distorted, humans on the other hand were really good with visual imagery because even if you did suck at reading, surely one could identify a jumble of warped letters and numbers. The test basically works like this: the computer generates a picture with distored text, you put in what you think is the correct answer, and then the computer grades you based on the answer that is imputed by programmers. A robot on the other hand cannot solve this prevent them from being able to spam the website. So thank CAPTCHAs the next time you're trying to snag those front row seats, you might actually have a higher chance at getting one now.
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