Both the Philippines and India are fiercely battling the top spot in the global call center and BPO industry. However, it seems India is moving ahead with more innovative and highly in-demand outsourcing needs. ZDNet looks into India’s CAPTCHA solving economy and share some insights on the industry.
Yes, people coming in to work in a 24/7 service company just to type in CATPCHAs. And to those who are unfamiliar with CAPTCHA’s — they are those images with twisted alpha-numeric characters you need to figure out to complete a registration or open an account on sites like MySpace, GMail, Yahoo! Mail, YouTube, Facebook and even ordinary forums, message boards, blogs and comment systems.
In the world of Business Process Outsourcing, the one that can deliver the fastest, most efficient and cheapest service gets the deal.
In India, they have small to medium businesses that service international clients with their CAPTCHA-solving needs. Each worker/employee can solve up to 800 CAPTCHAs per hour. Clients pay between $1 to $4 per 1,000 successful CAPTCHAs solve.
So, when are we going to have something like this in the Philippines? *heh*
Read more about the story at ZDNet.
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That’s kinda repetitive and boring but oh well, the things people would do for money.
I just can’t believe a job like this existed. Breaking CAPTCHAs? I still don’t understand what they really do and what is it for?
for spam purposes or for OCR?
I’ve recently tried working with captcha entry job with $0.80 per 1000 captcha, my feedback? it’s the most bullshit job i’ve ever tried.
Errr so they break CAPTCHAs to make spam accounts on MySpace, GMail, Yahoo! Mail, YouTube, Facebook and even ordinary forums, message boards, blogs and comment systems?
This work can ruin your brain. But aren’t there a lot of out-of-work people who can type or spell here in the PI? Guess not.
Let the Indian BPO “industry” take 100% market share of this line of business, and let the Philippine BPO sector prosper by continuing to do legitimate and professional work. ‘CAPTCHA farming’ exists only to mine e-mail, IM, and other user data for illegitimate purposes. The Philippines should not get dragged into this type of business — a business that only feeds crime on the web.
Forgive me if I assumed inccorectly, but isn’t solving CAPTCHAs basically for circumventing the anti-spamming measures of websites? That’s why websites have CAPTCHAs — it prevents automated submissions of possible bots that mine and spam e-mail addresses.
I, for one, can’t be excited if we drum up that kind of business here. We’d be associating our country with the ugly practice of spamming.
But I still could be wrong in my assumptions that that’s what the CAPTCHAs is for.
Read the talkback in the ZDNet article. There’s a discussion there about that.
I guess until this day it is still very difficult to design a computer system that automatically solves captcha. Image processing do require lots and lots of CPU power just to solve Captcha.
so, that’s the reason I’m getting spam comments on my blog despite having a CAPTCHA?!
Solving captcha is like helping people break in on a locked vault.
It’s similar to hacking isn’t it?
Honestly I dont get it….
What is it for anyway? does it have to do with internet marketing?
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Here’s something to help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
who would want to have a job like that. $4 per 1000 solved? is there really money to be made with that? overhead and salary expense? let the indians have it.
people make money out of spamming or out of fraud. breaking captchas is an engineering feat. i don’t think the point is breaking captchas.
why is it when there’s an engineering or software problem to be solved, why does it go to india? india has it’s own little silicon valley. there’s a lot of start ups in the silicon valley that are founded by indians. they’re way on top of their game. they’re willing to work better for less pay, and they reap the rewards.
where does this put pinoys in terms of IT and engineering? papahuli pa ba pinoy? i don’t think so, it’s just that we don’t put resources into technology. we do put resources into labor and health care for export. is it bad? are we losing an edge in the tech industry? maybe. but is it that important? maybe.
i have worked with people from india, bangladesh, ukraine, russia and they’re hardcore engineers. they wrote softwre books. saan na ang mga pinoy? baka nasa google. hehe.
HI SIR HOW R U I HOPE SIR U R GOOD FINE SIR I WANT TO SAY ABOUT ME SIR I AM A PROFESSIONAL TYPIST AND ALSO A MEMBER OF CAPTCHA DATA ENTRY SIR THIS TIME I WORK ON CAPTCHA DATA ENTRY SIR I WANT TO CREAT MY OWN TEAM TO DO WORK ON THIS PROJECT SIR IF U GIVE ME A CHANCE TO DO WORK WITH U SO I AM VERY THANKFUL TO AND GIVE U A GREAT OUT FROM ME.I AM VERY THANKFUL TO IF U GIVE ME REPLY. SIR I AM WAITING FOR UR REPLY.