On the necessity of user-friendly CAPTCHA

A "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" (CAPTCHA) is a mechanism widely used nowadays for protection of web applications, interfaces, and services from malicious users. A questionnaire-based survey combined with a real usage scenario of a native-language CAPTCHA mechanism was conducted in order to investigate several aspects that affect end-user perceptions related to the quality of CAPTCHA. A total of 210 participants of age between 19 and 64 participated during May and July 2010. The survey results validate the common belief that CAPTCHAs are still difficult for humans to solve. They also provide insights that can be applied to improve users' experience on interacting with CAPTCHA systems.