Microsoft Adds Kittens to Spam-Fighting Armoury

By Greg McNevin

August 8, 2007: The fight against spam could soon become a whole lot cuter as sophisticated algorithms and dedicated appliances make way for photos of kittens.

According to Microsoft researcher Kevin Larson, getting users to identify the subject of a photo, such as a kitten, could be a potent alternative to strings of obscured letters and numbers used in CAPTCHA-like (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) spam blocking systems.

Speaking at Typecon 2007 in Seattle on Friday, Larson said that Microsoft has been using Human Interactive Proofs (HIPs) systems for five years now, however, as part of its Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) research project the firm is looking into new and even more cagey ways to outsmart spammers. To this end, Larson said that the current jumbled letters and numbers system could one day be replaced by the new and more user-friendly Asirra system which takes elements from KittenAuth and HotCaptcha.

KittenAuth gets users to pick out pictures of cats from a grid of images, while HotCaptcha goes the far less polictally correct and more subject route of getting users to weed out attractive people from groups for authentication. Pick all the cats (or the hotties) and you’re authenticated, and provided the database of images is big enough, gaming the system becomes quite difficult.

The Asirra project is currently testing a beta system that displays 12 animal pictures in a grid and asks a user to pick all of the cats or the dogs that pop up. Images are pulled from a database of three million photos thanks to the projects partnership with Petfinder.com, and all photos include an “adopt me” link so users can not only authenticate their sessions on websites, but potentially get a new best friend.

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