I Am Not A Robot: The Danger Of Proving You're Human
 | Author:
Victor Sample
Vic Sample: MT43 News Treasurer |
Today I am warning you about some malware that tries to trick you into installing software that will bombard you with ads.
I am sure that most of you have come across the “I am not a Robot” checkbox when filling out any kind of public form—for instance, a “Contact Us” form on a website.
The other day I came across a “I am not a Robot” feature on a form—but it did not look like the usual Google version. It was a fun, comic-looking checkbox. I have run across it several times and my habit is to immediately leave the page before I remember to get a screen shot of it. When I try to go back it doesn’t show.
But I do know what it does. The fake “I am not a Robot” test will install Adware on your PC and you will immediately be bombarded with ads.
With some work the Adware can be removed from your pc; but it is very annoying and time consuming.
If you see an “I am not a Robot” box and it does not look like the Google’s version in the screen shot —leave the page immediately.
Web Bots
The “I am not a Robot” checkbox is a tool that Google provides to website developers to help distinguish between humans and “Web Bots”.
A Web Bot is a program that explores websites; some with good intent and some with bad intent. Google uses web bots to examine websites to buld its search database and make it both useful and efficient. That is a web bot with good intentions.
Web bots can also examine websites to discover forms. Contact Us forms, informa¬tion request forms, and account sign-up forms, to name a few. They then use some tricks of the trade against weakly-protected websites to intercept your goal of submitting the form and use it instead to download soft¬ware you don’t want. I have seen website order forms that have been filled with Web Bot malware to download buckets of Adware.
Adware
Adware is software designed to bombard you with unwanted ads. Generally speaking, Adware is not trying to destroy your PC or steal your identity; its just designed to deliver ads—gener¬ally in a very annoying way.
The Captcha
The Google “I am not a Ro¬bot” tool has a formal name, it’s called a Captcha. That’s an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Which is a lengthy way of asking, “are you a bot?” It’s designed to help screen out web bots that will automatically fill in any kind of form to access the website’s databases. That’s a good thing—but such is life that someone figured out a way to use it for advertising.
If you see an “I am not a Robot” box that doesn’t look like Google’s—run.
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PhotoCredit: Vic Sample
Image 1 Caption: Legitimate Google "I Am Not A Robot" test
