Image encryption?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Perlmonks! Not sure where else to ask....so here goes.

My boss has asked me to add a feature to our webform that forces the user to enter the word located in 'encrypted image'. You see this a lot all over the web in order to stop programs/people from automatically submitting their forms (using Mechanize or whatever). Once a user correctly enters the 'word' in the image with the form, the form submission is accepted and processed by the program.

Does anyone know where I can find information on how to implement this? Where do i get the images? Has anyone else done this?

Comment on Image encryption?

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Re: Image encryption? by moklevat (Priest) on Dec 14, 2007 at 15:35 UTC
You are looking for "captcha". CPAN has many resources for this.	[reply]
Re: Image encryption? by naChoZ (Curate) on Dec 14, 2007 at 16:07 UTC
I'd specifically recommend the Captcha::reCAPTCHA module which would give you the captcha functionality you're seeking as well as supporting a worthy project. -- naChoZ Therapy is expensive. Popping bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.	[reply]
Re: Image encryption? by marto (Cardinal) on Dec 14, 2007 at 15:38 UTC
Sounds like you mean a captcha, take a look at captcha, or view other results of a CPAN search. I have never use any of these modules, so check out a few of them before deciding on one. Update: Fixed CPAN link and added last sentance. Hope this helps Martin	[reply]
Re: Image encryption? by dorward (Curate) on Dec 15, 2007 at 10:06 UTC
You've already been pointed to resources about CAPTCHAs, so I won't repeat those here. I will warn that they can cause accessibility problems and point out that they are not hard to defeat, and have been being bypassed easily enough for a good few years now. ... so you might want to reconsider using one of these.	[reply]