Why websites asks you to enter a code such in emails?

Question

Why does websites like yahoomail and yahoo messenger ask you to enter a code given as image.. What are the reasons?

P.S

If you dont understand the question just let me know...

Answer 1

The real reason behind those is that sites like Yahoo!, Myspace, and many others get hacked a lot by either hackers, or other computers that hackers set up.  They hack those sites and sign up a lot of fake accounts to spam other users on the internet.  So to combat this, and since computers doing the hacking for hackers work much faster than a human being and can probably do this hundreds of times a second, those web sites have to help filter out who is real and who isn't.  The weird code you see can't be read by the computers in most cases because the letters are warped out of place and have lines crisscrossing them to prevent a computer from determining what set of pixels are making what character.  Humans however can determine this and can type what they're seeing into the box.  Get the wrong answer, and you don't get in.  Computers in most cases can't get in because of that, thus protecting those sites from that breed of hacker.

Answer 2

Yeahhh i know what you mean! i get that too when i sing out of yahoo, sometimes i will see that screen, i see it in myspace when messaging, its just to prevent from bots, its called Captcha.

dont worry about it.

Answer 3

So hackers(bot) cannot signup the an account automatically with scripts as they cant read graphic as easy as text.

Cheers,

http://www.serveraustralia.com.au

Answer 4

It's called a Captcha. Its purpose is to distinguish between human users and bots (computer programs). This prevents bots from creating fake accounts and sending spam.