Google Using ReCAPTCHA To Decode Street Addresses

smolloy writes "Apparently some users of reCAPTCHA have recently begun seeing photographs appear in their CAPTCHA puzzles — photos that look very much like zoomed in house numbers taken from Google Streetview. It appears that Google has decided to put the reCAPTCHA system to help clean up Google streetview images, and 'according to a Google spokesperson, the system isn't limited to street addresses, but also involves street names and even traffic signs.' A large collection of these has appeared on the Blackhatworld website."

Take off your tin foil hat

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an incredibly fascinating and great use of the technology.

Re:I'm a Microsoft whore

[nedlohs]

Yeah because those street number designed to tell everyone passing by what number the house is on the street are meant to be private.

Re:This is actually kind of frightening...

[nine-times]

I don't find it worrying. The existence of a street address is properly public knowledge. It's not an invasion of privacy until they link the address with who lives there.

Re:If I just type out the necessary word...

[X0563511]

Great. You know what they were previously? OCR for things like libraries.

I think your own answer to them describes what you are.

Re:Take off your tin foil hat

[Anonymous Coward]

It's mostly the fault of 4chan.
Ever since Re-Captcha was implmented there, most of the RC results are
'(Checkword) Nigger'

Re:Are people actually annoyed at this?

[icebike]

Oh, climb down off that ledge before you get hurt.

reCAPTCHA is for what ever you want to use it for, Its simply a technique for crowdsourcing guesses.

In my estimation, Google maps and street view is one of the great accomplishments of our time, easily worth every penny Google monetizes out of it.

Interesting

[Sussurros]

Thank you for the information, I've often wondered about them.

I only have about a 60% success rate on those swirly semi-inverted ones. My wife's friend's decaptcha software does a much better job than I do with its 79% success rate. I had wondered that as they get harder to read that the day was almost here when only machines would have the ability to decode captchas and prove that they were human.