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59 Responses to “Yahoo’s Captcha Project a Problem”

1. Christine
   February 10th, 2006 at 10.15 am

   

   That sucks hardcore :/ This is why I only use Yahoo for messenger and GIN! ;) I never did like their email setup anyway :(

2. Nicole Ross
   February 10th, 2006 at 10.16 am ♥

   

   I use Thunderbird for EVERYTHING, so luckily I do not have that problem. But oh my wow. I’d be pissed! Especially since it isn’t saving a draft or anything.

3. Christine
   February 10th, 2006 at 10.22 am

   

   Ha…that’s pretty funny….I just told her IM to try Thunderbird lol. That’s what I use too :)

4. Val
   February 10th, 2006 at 10.34 am

   

   I never used Thunderbird before. I honestly kinda like the Yahoo setup. It’s great for using my domain mail. I wasn’t able to send from my domains through this or my last ISP with Outlook. The mail servers didn’t want to accept anything.

5. Christine
   February 10th, 2006 at 10.43 am

   

   Well see…Thunderbird is far superior to Outlook! It’s a Mozilla product! You know I would be more than happy to help you get it up and running properly! :)

6. Chelsea
   February 10th, 2006 at 11.18 am ♥

   

   I’ve never ever had to view a screen like that and I’ve had my Yahoo! account for well over a year now, maybe a year and a half… that’s ridiculous. Maybe it’s just the sbcglobal accounts? I don’t know.. but that must be really annoying :( I’m sorry.

7. Val
   February 10th, 2006 at 11.40 am

   

   Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora – none of it will matter. :) It’s that the SBC/Yahoo outgoing mailservers won’t let you use any outgoing servers but their own. Same with the ISP I had before them. I think there might be a way I figured out how to trick them, but it was on someone else’s computer using Earthlink, so I dunno. Plus, I am all set up now where I am. :P
   Hey, haven’t we discussed this before? :)

   Actually, Chelsea, now that I think of it, I signed up for a Yahoo account for some project or something and an email I set from there, the first one and only one, got the Captcha. That email is discontinued now, we decided we didn’t need it.

8. Jason
   February 10th, 2006 at 12.14 pm

   

   Psst…GMail :-)

9. Val
   February 10th, 2006 at 12.18 pm

   

   Pssst. :) I really like Gmail but it has A LOT to learn as far as handling external mail accounts before I fully switch over. Also, the option to use folders instead of the tag-thingies or along with them would be a good idea, too.

10. anneberit
    February 10th, 2006 at 4.50 pm

    

    Losing the words you wrote just because you didn’t pass the captcha is just craze! I’ve lost posts because my old computer crashed all the time, and it’s so annoying, not to mention hard, to recreate a mail….

    Hope the rest of the weekend is good :D

11. kristin
    February 10th, 2006 at 5.12 pm ♥

    

    I love gmail! But I guess it depends on your personal preferences.

12. Val
    February 11th, 2006 at 2.28 pm

    

    Oh, I adore Gmail as well, it just can’t quite handle what I need for my business. Yet. When it does, I’ll consider a full move. But my family can never get it when I change an email address – it takes them a year to finally change over their address book links. So none of them have my Gmail yet. ;-)

13. Val
    February 13th, 2006 at 2.13 pm

    

    Well, apparently when I sent Yahoo the angry letter, it was sent to SBC instead. So they actually did something about it (unlike the usual protocol of Yahoo’s help team) and sent me an email saying they were going to call me.

    They called while I was out at Best Buy (Saturday) and our call forwarding sent it over to my cell phone but I didn’t answer it in time. They called again last night (Sunday around 9pm lol) and we had a little chat.

    Wow, aye?

14. Jason
    February 13th, 2006 at 2.16 pm

    

    It’s only “wow” if they’re going to do something about it. Though, I *AM* surprised they actually called you.

15. Val
    February 13th, 2006 at 2.35 pm

    

    Yeah that’s true and she did kind of mention something in the way of making sure Yahoo knew this and should work in some functionality. Blah blah blah.

    Of course, she was kind of hard to hear thanks to my kid and I had to watch myself because I tend to occassionally take on people’s accents without meaning to and she had a dang good one. :)

    Oh, I must also mention that not only did they call me twice but the first guy actually left a voicemail… Even some of my friends don’t leave voicemails. :P

16. Mike
    March 2nd, 2006 at 9.32 pm ♥

    

    Val,

    I have a computer consulting client who is retired with severe low vision problems, so cannot deal with the Captcha problem. Any thoughts on how to appeal her case to the Yahoo powers that be at Yahoo Mail or SBC?

    If you can reply here, I will be looking for the assistance.

    Thanks.

17. Val
    March 3rd, 2006 at 8.27 am

    

    The only way I would know would be to call them directly (Yahoo) and see if it can be removed on her account. Remind them how long she and you have been good customers for sure and explain her disability as thoroughly as possible.

    Does she encounter the Captcha a lot?

18. Adrian
    March 8th, 2006 at 7.54 pm ♥

    

    I am a paying Yahoo Mail customer, and this text verification thing really upsets me. I emailed their customer care, but they said they can’t remove it from my account. I guess we are in the process of revolting.

19. Val
    March 9th, 2006 at 2.32 pm

    

    I’ve been getting hit with the Captcha a lot more than I was, since I posted this post. But they seem to have implemented a new feature as well, you get a second chance if you fail. There was one last week where I failed it twice. I don’t even know why, as far as I could see I was entering in the characters correctly. So I had three tries to get it, I’m not sure how many it will give you.

20. Bes
    March 19th, 2006 at 4.56 pm

    

    Yes, you’re right. SBCGlobal servers, which are Yahoo mail servers in reality, will not allow such email to be sent if it’s trying to use Captcha on that specific email [I may be mistaken]. I’ve been hit with that in the past few weeks and was surprised. I passed the retarded letter test, though.
    It is extremely stupid, yes, to discard the email is the letters do not match; really really retarded. Yep, we are in the process of revolting and I also have a sbcglobal account.
    Did Yahoo respond to you yet?

21. basia
    January 28th, 2007 at 5.31 pm ♥

    

    This is so so very annoying. I was having to do the captcha thing almost every email because i email to a foriegn domain! SO SO ANNOYING!!!! But my friend is on yahoo.pl! so its still yahoo! I hope they drop this soon!

22. Doug
    June 1st, 2007 at 11.20 am

    

    this captcha game must stop…I am human not a computer…

23. Doug
    June 1st, 2007 at 11.32 am

    

    what do you want changed??? I want captcha removed, or what I can do to eliminate it…

24. Val
    June 1st, 2007 at 10.16 pm

    

    Doug, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by your second comment. Yahoo doesn’t care a lick about what I say anymore. Now I’m even seeing ads on my stuff even though I wasn’t supposed to, as a paying SBC (now ATT) customer. But it seems that since it became ATT, in came the ads. Too bad they’re the only DSL we can get in our area right now…

    Anyway, this post was originally from a year ago and since then Yahoo seems to have made it so that if you fail the captcha that you will not lose your email but get to try again. As I mentioned in a comment above, there was once where I failed twice. However, I rarely encounter the captcha at all anymore. I do think though, that every time the word “password” is in the email, it gets caught, I have noticed that…

    Are you losing emails because of the captcha?

25. Fed Up Yahoo User
    August 22nd, 2007 at 9.56 am

    

    I also have had this problem on a continual basis and it got so bad that I have had to abandon my Yahoo account. Also, I noticed when the e-mails were flagged for the extra word entry, that about half of them didn’t go through to the intended recipient AT ALL especially other Yahoo accounts. It continually gets worse and it seems that Yahoo’s software can’t tell the difference between a legitimate user and a spammer.

26. New Victim
    September 24th, 2007 at 9.08 pm ♥

    

    I just started having problems with the “Captcha Project” today and am equally frustrated. Yahoo chat had no answer, I have not heard from the “abuse” “police” at Yahoo. I even called the professor in charge of the “Captcha Project” at Carnegie Mellon and he indicated this has nothing to do with his project but it is an AT&T problem. Have you found a solution? I expect to sit on the phone with them tomorrow.

27. Val
    September 24th, 2007 at 10.11 pm

    

    No, I have not yet seen a real solution, but I also have not been triggering the captcha lately. I didn’t trigger it much after that and when I did, it had changed that it didn’t throw away my message. And now I use Thunderbird so that I have not seen a captcha ever. I’m not sure what would happen to messages that would normally trigger a captcha when using a program like Thunderbird or if they can…

28. Mark
    September 27th, 2007 at 12.04 am

    

    Can the captcha program be removed from files in my computer or are they part of a program thats in yahoos servers ..?

29. New Victim
    September 27th, 2007 at 3.09 pm ♥

    

    This is the response I received from the AT&T Abuse site. I have not gone further with my problem because it has mysteriously stopped for the moment and I have not gotten the “Captcha” screen lately. NV

    Hello,

    It appears you have received an image verification test within Yahoo!
    Mail. Yahoo! has implemented this process to combat spammers from using
    automated programs to exploit the Yahoo! Mail system to protect the
    internet community and you from unsolicited email. If you have received
    an image verification page but do not feel your email was unsolicited in
    nature, again we apologize for the inconvenience.

    For more information regarding this measure, please contact
    abuse@yahoo.com

    Thank you,

    The AT&T Internet Abuse Department

30. Val
    September 27th, 2007 at 3.34 pm

    

    @ Mark — It’s a Yahoo thing, it’s not on your computer.

31. Val
    September 27th, 2007 at 7.30 pm

    

    @ New Victim – sorry, missed that your comment was in moderation before. Yeah, Yahoo’s pretty inept in any department of help. It’s like talking with a monkey.

32. mike Bortko
    October 12th, 2007 at 10.06 am

    

    I curse the sombitches who developed this…it continues to invade my space…I dont want it but it comes back and back and back…I emailed Mellon and they have an excuse…
    thus, I curse the jerks who developed this…when the voodoo guy I hired stuck his needle into the doll I relished the thought that some rotten bastard was having a major tummie ache. Next we do the cranial area and we hope the bastart cannot develop any other ludicrous device which allows unauthorized visits to our privacy.

33. mike Bortko
    October 16th, 2007 at 6.50 am

    

    It goes on and on and on…the onlyest solution is to junk yahoo for another service.
    Believe me, yahoo does not care about this.
    I will take the above suggestions and look into G-Mail.

    In the meantime I continue to curse the developers and the implementers of this pox.
    Mike

34. hilary
    November 9th, 2007 at 1.58 pm

    

    have not been able to send mail yo yahoo for 24 hours

35. a jay
    January 18th, 2008 at 1.04 am ♥

    

    man this captha is making me nuts, i even write the right code but the “I D” of the person chatting cant be seen it is just wirtten there captha and nothing happens i dont know why man this stinks i have not been able to open chat since months. it just maks me mad

36. a jay
    January 18th, 2008 at 1.07 am ♥

    

    there is no one worthy of worship except only one God. he is single and prophet Muhammad is the last and final messenger of God

37. Md.shohel
    March 2nd, 2008 at 2.30 pm ♥

    

    This is shohel from Bangladesh. we are doing some captcha project like gmail,hotmail & my space. But i want to do yahoo captcha. i’ll give u 24 hours and 6 days support without out yarly holiday. We give 20 computers support at first time. And give 13000 data per system.
    Sir, i think i’ll full fill ur requermants & hope to ur quick response.
    Thanking on
    Md.shohel.

38. Val
    March 2nd, 2008 at 4.42 pm

    

    Md.shohel, I’m sorry, but I do not understand what you are saying or wanting.

39. SOMEL
    March 24th, 2008 at 8.44 pm

    

    I think YAHOO WILL GONA BE MAD AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE :).AND WE CALL YAHOO “CAPTCHA YAHOO” =)).

40. kat
    April 13th, 2008 at 10.03 am

    

    This site cheered me up immensely. I somewhat recently switched to yahoo mail. Even more recently I have been plagued with the captcha crap. After reaching upper level tech “support” that consisted of them emailing me a canned spiel about captcha, and repeating that spiel when I wrote them back, I have gone postal on yahoo and am currently torturing the techs with captcha comments. Every time I get captcha I write the techs a chatty note and tell them there will be a quiz. I just sent this link to every saved tech address I had, with appropriate snotty comments. Hasn’t solved the captcha problem, but at least I’m smiling now. My goal (after they finally get the message that they have to call me in the morning if they want to talk to me in person), is to get one of them to scream at me on the phone, or, better yet, quit their job and run screaming from the building. The only thing that will stop me from torturing them is if the captcha crap goes away permanently or I go on a long vacation away from my computer. I have endless patience and the tendency to carry a grudge. Maybe the techs will get so fed up they will start a rebellion against the ATTyahoo corp stance on captcha. yeah right.

41. Facebook hates TinyURL -or- Facebook is on crack at spoken for
    May 26th, 2008 at 11.22 am ♥

    

    [...] what’s the deal, Facebook? Much like when I wrote about Yahoo’s Captcha (over two years ago), I think it’s ridiculous that the message is not saved. Facebook should [...]

42. die yahoo die
    January 9th, 2009 at 5.43 am ♥

    

    The difference between Google and Yahoo is that Google acts like they care about their customers. Yahoo won’t even pretend they do. Gotta give them that – they don’t give a **** about you and they’re proud of it. Kudos.

43. Anonymous
    January 17th, 2009 at 5.52 pm ♥

    

    I’m a seventy yr. old woman with cataracts, and I can’t read that hen scratching. You would think they could tell the difference between a robot and a person by now. I was suprised to know this has been going on science 2006.

44. Val
    January 17th, 2009 at 11.23 pm

    

    Yeah they’ve been pulling this for a while. Also, I don’t play games there very often but now they’ve added a captcha to get into the main game room and I tell you what, I have to try at least 3 times to get into any of them because I apparently can’t read the letters either!

45. phil
    February 4th, 2009 at 9.52 am ♥

    

    I cannot read the captcha and have lost my email
    send

46. Annoyed with Yahoo
    April 15th, 2009 at 8.36 pm ♥

    

    I’m upset, too. My problem’s even worse: lately, I don’t get a blamed cursor in the captcha box and can’t type in the stupid letters! That is, I can’t even send out any e-mail! I first told them about it 2 months ago when it was intermittent (and I was on a completely different PC) but now it won’t stop, even with a reboot of my PC. I had to use their stupid “feedback” webscreen just to clue them that it was now over 2 months later and despite their promises of a speedy fix the problem has become worse, not better.

47. phil
    April 16th, 2009 at 12.55 pm ♥

    

    i overcame captcha by using it once then it went

48. Jen
    April 20th, 2009 at 6.45 am

    

    Yahoo Captcha wont even allow me to enter the letters. Can’t reply or forward mail due to this…..WTF?

49. Clem
    May 3rd, 2009 at 1.03 am

    

    Get this… I set up a yahoo group and every single f*@!#@g time I post, I get Captcha. And I AM legally blind (without correction). They now say they don’t want vision-impaired people to go, and give an address (for a second) to write… but it is just their regular contact us email.

    1) I wish I had never started a group at yahoo 2) I guess I am going to go to gmail and give up yahoo. Have been with them years and years, but they seem totally incompetent. Do they really thing the owner of a group is going to go thru Captcha ever single post? And I’m noticing Captcha all over the place on other accounts (for groups I don’t own and rarely use).

    Maybe they don’t want to have free accounts? That could be it. They want to drive us away. If so, it is working

50. mamun
    May 13th, 2009 at 11.56 am ♥

    

    sent urgently

51. mamun
    May 13th, 2009 at 11.57 am ♥

    

    sent captcha in mamun_bangla2002@yahoo.com

52. Jan
    July 9th, 2009 at 11.08 am

    

    I am another yahoo Catpcha victim. I happen to have three email accounts with them…two I use daily and send the same amount of person emails to people in my address book. Suddenly about 4 days ago my one account now requires catpcha for ALL emails I sent. They claim it is because I must have a signature or html or attachments. I don’t. I shut off everything and send a plain text email that said nothing but the word “test”. And STIll I have to enter letters. Both these accounts are over a year old…in fact I have been had my yahoo account since the mid 90’s before the invention of SPAM! I am angry and they need to get a clue. I don’t mind entering it a few times to verify, yes I am an actual person. Well…after sending 50 emails over a week and verifying ALL of them..you’d think it would be obvious I am a human and not a spam bot. They claim that Captcha is a yahoo policy and it is required for all email accounts. Ok, well, then why is only ONE of my accounts doing this? it sounds like random attacks on random accounts to me. Catpcha is becoming worse than spam ever was.

53. G G Brown
    September 8th, 2009 at 2.03 pm

    

    I learned from a website that if you report the scammers with their phishing schemes that they will be caught and the 25 to 40 emails I receive daily will be reduced to nothing. It has got worse and at least 3 out of every 5 messages that I try to report then up pops the captcha which simply robs me of my time. Unfortunately there are many who fall prey to these parasites but from now on; DELETE. Thanks.

54. billiejean
    September 17th, 2009 at 3.27 pm

    

    Yahoo is now a MASSIVE pain in my ass. I have used yahoo for years and have been very happy with it. Now that these knuckleheads have started drinking, smoking crack, and apparently creating new drug combinations, they have decided this demented captcha crap is a great idea. No, as I told yahoo, it isn’t. Just to send a simple email, I need to try and decode indeciperable gibberish and type it in some oaf’s box. Great. No, thanks. I’ll take my email elsewhere.

55. Beej Parker
    September 17th, 2009 at 4.23 pm

    

    This captcha thing is the nightmare that keeps on giving. It’s so burdonsome it is not worth using. I will be moving my email from yahoo to another provider that actually thinks the client matters. I don’t intend to keep hassling with a site that makes me look at images I can’t even make out and type them in a box. I probably don’t send 30 emails per year. I always send emails one at the time. I don’t spam and never have. So why I am being put through this? I am not going to waste my time. So long, yahoo.

56. bLaCk
    October 9th, 2009 at 9.11 pm ♥

    

    I totally agree that Yahoo CAPTCHA thingy is bull*** so hotmail here I come :)~

57. M BHADRA
    October 30th, 2009 at 6.08 am ♥

    

    YAHOO CAPTCHA project is no nonsence I have no idea why YAHOO with so intelligent people are doing this. Complete nonsence in the name of spam protection.

58. Anonymous
    January 26th, 2010 at 6.41 pm

    

    This captcha is worthless

59. Gerald Stack
    February 23rd, 2010 at 10.00 am

    

    I am new at sending emails. I tryed for over a week to sign up to yahoo. Finnaly I was suscessful and was accepted. I haven’t been able to send a single email. If this what it’s all about, I wan’t no part of it. My wife has been with yahoo for years and she has had no such problems This is a big problem!!!!