Ticketmaster ditches its unpopular Captcha

GlobalPost

Perhaps realizing that money from robots is still money, Ticketmaster will stop making customers solve difficult puzzles to prove that they are human.

Ticketmaster has been using the puzzle known as Captcha, an acronym that stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," the Associated Press reported.

Customers hated Ticketmaster's Captcha because they said it was so difficult to decipher that it slowed the ticket-buying process down. For concerts that sell out fast, this could be a major annoyance. 

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"It is generally speaking the one of the most hated pieces of user interaction on the web," Aaron Young, a user experience consultant, told BBC News.

In a press release, Ticketmaster announced that it would replace its Captcha with "new, friendlier, easier to use" robot-catching solutions. The future is upon us. Or, to be more specific, Ticketmaster says that the new system will be better at catching BOTS, a computer program that scalpers use to grab all the tickets first. 

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