Not sure if this is the right area to post this in...But myspace/tom enabled a new feature where you submit your cell phone number to verify your pc and forever disables CAPTCHA for sending friend requests, comments, blah blah blah. Although, I'm not sure if that overrides user's privacy settings. Nonetheless, I'd say it's a new beginning for those who primarily uses myspace for marketing purposes. Another catch is that it's only currently available for U.S. users, but will be expanding to other "territories" or as Tom states. Additional info can be found on toms blog: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=6221&blogID=480984292
Dear You are right several sites are using cell phone numbers for verification but using a captcha is totally different thing ... A bot can post specific number but feel always difficult to read random numbers and characters.
What? It's even better if you're using a bot as you no longer have to monitor each add and type in the captcha code when needed to, as there will be no captcha code when you verify your pc by submitting your cell phone number. I'm going to test it out later on tonight and report back. Gotta wipe off the dust and wake up my old myspace adder that I haven't used in ages.
CAPTCHA is the very outdated feature, which doesn't protect you from spam. None of my sites use CAPTCHA and still there is no spam comments on my sites.
this is encourage spamming but i think if the person will spam, captcha will still not be effective to deter it.
And the cellphone number you give them surely won't be used to bombard you with ads later down the road forcing you to get a new number. I think I'll pass.
This is myspace we're talking here, not somethin off of a php forum . There is no bot out there that can bypass captcha, or at least not on the market anyway. I was wondering the same thing. With myspace captcha, nearly most popular myspace adder bots went down the drain in the last couple years. The one I had I forgot I had already uninstalled it to free up more space. =/ If you don't care about targeting your users, you can myspace adder sites like friendstorm.net. I was on it last night and managed to send out 500 requests in under 45 minutes with the captcha disabled. With captcha enabled, it usually takes me close to two hours to send out that many. And that's just manually adding people, I'd say it's a big time saver now. What's stopping you from spending a couple bucks on a pre-paid cell phone that you can use temporarily? Small price to pay for such a potential market to exploit.