What Is CAPTCHA? And Why Should You Care About It?

“I am not a robot,” said the sneaker bot as it checked the CAPTCHA box. Then proceeded to add those Jordans to the cart and check them out, oh-so smoothly! But, what is CAPTCHA exactly? Why is it a very important thing in the botting world? And why do we have to look for that lousy fire hydrant every time we go to certain sites? Today we’re gonna answer this question and see how vital solving CAPTCHAS is to sneaker botting. And if you’re new here, you can start by learning about what sneaker botting is, what bots are, and the different types too!

What Is CAPTCHA?

Ever wondered what the actual word means? Well, brace yourself, because it’s a long a$$ phrase. CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. But how does CAPTCHA tell computers and humans apart? Well, with modern technology, there are different types of tests to do that. Let’s check them out, shall we?

Types of CAPTCHA

Now that we know what is CAPTCHA, we gotta let you in on what the different types are. Yes, as if we needed to complicate life any further. Anyway, here are the different types of CAPTCHA you might come across:

• Text CAPTCHA: You just have to type the series of letters you see.
• Image CAPTCHA: “Select all images with buses”… Familiar much?
• Audio CAPTCHA: An audio version of the text CAPTCHA that comes in handy for people with visual impairments.
• Math CAPTCHA: It’s usually a simple math equation like “What is 1+6?”. It’s simple for a human, but pretty challenging for a bot that doesn’t do math.
• 3D Captcha: It’s a trickier type of CAPTCHA where you have to rotate or move objects around to solve.
• reCAPTCHA: The most common CAPTCHA online that keeps evolving. From v1 and v2 to v3, it went from image recognition to behavioral analysis. Wicked, isn’t it?

Why Do Websites Use CAPTCHA?

So today, our case study is gonna be about a sneaker website, a sneaker bot, and your average sneakerhead. Although cyber security has come a really long way, CAPTCHA still feels like the simplest option to find bots. So it’s one type of bot protection. However, just as CAPTCHA is evolving, sneaker bots are also catching up fast. And most, if not all bots now auto-solve CAPTCHAs.

On the other hand, CAPTCHA kinda helps AI evolve by monitoring human answers and judgment. So sometimes, there are no right and wrong answers. The only metric there is human responses. So if 85% of people chose the pole with the traffic light, it’s gonna count as the right answer! That makes zero sense, but who are we to judge?

What Is CAPTCHA on Sneaker Sites?

Sneaker sites like Shopify, Footsites, and others usually go for CAPTCHA to detect bots. However, sneaker bots are getting smarter, faster, stronger – sorry Kanye! As we already mentioned, most bots can solve CAPTCHAs automatically now. However, if your bot doesn’t have it, there are always CAPTCHA-solving APIs out there! Among them is Capsolver, the best and cheapest captcha-solving service. What makes Capsolver stand out:

• Image-to-Text Decoding
• FunCaptcha
• ReCAPTCHA (v2/v2 enterprise/v2 invisible)
• ReCAPTCHA (v3/v3 enterprise)
• AWS Captcha / Challenge
• DataDome Captcha

and many more!

Now That You Know All This…

Now you have your answer if you didn’t know what is CAPTCHA. And the good news we have for you is that NSB can do all that for you! When you get your copy, you get many perks, including the groundbreaking AI CAPTCHA solver. That’s one way that NSB, as a sneaker bot, can give you better odds of successfully buying sneakers for retail!

However, solving CAPTCHA isn’t the only thing that will make or break your experience. Even the best sneaker bots need an excellent setup to have the highest chance of success. So, check this out for a list of all the things you’ll need to achieve the best setup! Finally, sneaker botting is all about trial and error until you find the winning combo for you. Until then, keep an eye on our blog for more botting guides and sneaker news. Godspeed!