If faculty members and students at California Polytechnic State University's College of Liberal Arts want a Web account, they need to pick out some cats. And avoid dogs.
It's a new method, demonstrated this week at a tech fair in Washington, of telling humans apart from computer programs. Those programs, created by spammers and hackers to hijack servers, fill college e-mail systems with garbage such as links to porn sites. Other security methods, such as asking users to recognize and retype warped letters, can be easily defeated.
But the truth about cats and dogs is that humans are much better than computer programs at telling them apart. Scientists at Microsoft Research developed a program that capitalizes on this ability. Twelve photographs of cats and dogs pop up on the screen, and users have to identify the cats ("You're a human!") or they won't be allowed to proceed. On the Cal Poly site, this takes about 10 seconds.
The free program was rolled out two months ago, and several institutions are experimenting with it. A bonus for animal lovers: The photos come from a database of more than 2 million animals held by the adoption service Petfinder.com and each one comes with a link that can lead you to adopt the pet. –Josh Fischman
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