Are You a Human Aims to Replace Distorted-Text CAPTCHAs

PlayThru is a User-Friendly, Game-Based Security Solution
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Detroit – Are You a Human, a Detroit-based company that designs simple games used to verify human interaction on websites, Monday announced its innovative game-based human authentication tool, PlayThru. Designed to replace distorted text CAPTCHAs as a means of human identification, PlayThru is a free, cloud-based solution and is already deployed on the websites of popular business-to-consumer companies such as Quicken Loans and Fathead.

“Fathead is thrilled to have an alternative to traditional CAPTCHAs,” said Joanna Cline, CMO at Fathead. “We want to present our customers with simple, engaging solutions, and PlayThru eliminates the frustration customers often experience with CAPTCHAs.”

CAPTCHA security challenges, predominantly based on the distorted text model, are used to discern humans from automated bot applications. These images are traditionally difficult to read and create a poor user experience. As a result, nearly 25 percent of users will leave a website rather than complete the CAPTCHA to sign up for an account, participate in online polls, or post comments.

As the first game-based CAPTCHA, PlayThru solves the major problems associated with the text model, including decreased security. It invites users to solve a game by identifying and interacting with dynamic objects, for example, dragging and dropping toppings onto a pizza.

Because of the dynamic nature of the game, these intuitive puzzles are easy for humans to solve but difficult for a computer. Puzzles with branded algorithms distinguish human interaction from malicious automated attacks, give content providers confidence they are dealing with real humans, and give users a much more pleasant experience. The drag and drop methodology also makes PlayThru a mobile-friendly solution for touch screen smartphones.

“Text-based CAPTCHAs are difficult to decipher and easy to break, which forces them to become increasingly more difficult to solve. This vicious cycle makes it frustrating for users, who many times will give up before following through to a site,” said Reid Tatoris, COO of Are You a Human.

In Are You a Human-sponsored surveys, 98 percent of users preferred PlayThru over traditional text-based CAPTCHAs. In beta deployments, sites using PlayThru have seen submission rates increase by up to 40 percent over the CAPTCHAs.

PlayThru integrates with multiple CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, PHPBB, and vBulletin, as well as libraries for all popular code formats. The solution can be downloaded for free at www.areyouahuman.com