{"id":45238,"date":"2023-10-20T15:42:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/captcha-this-how-a-brisbane-start-up-is-using-games-to-fight-spambots-and-challenge-google-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:42:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:42:04","slug":"captcha-this-how-a-brisbane-start-up-is-using-games-to-fight-spambots-and-challenge-google-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/captcha-this-how-a-brisbane-start-up-is-using-games-to-fight-spambots-and-challenge-google-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Captcha this: How a Brisbane start-up is using games to fight spambots and challenge Google – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A spam-fighting start-up from Brisbane has launched their gamified alternative to computer tests that ensure a user is human, known as captchas, and won the People\u2019s Choice award at this week\u2019s Mobile Monday meet-up.<\/p>\n

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SwipeAds offers very short games as an alternative to the twisty letter style captchas website users have to decipher and fill in to prove they are human and gain access to sites and downloads.<\/p>\n

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Co-founder Matthew Ford told StartupSmart<\/i> they were launching a new website next week as they move out of beta, but they quietly stopped calling the system beta last week.<\/p>\n

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Born out of a start-up weekend in Brisbane, the business was registered in January and launched in February.<\/p>\n

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Rather than peering at twisted letters and typing them in, the FunCaptcha product by SwipeAds offers very short and easy games instead, such as a digital version of whack the rabbit on the head or choosing which faces are the female ones from a line-up.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve made games that can separate the humans from the spam bots. We\u2019re not all that good recognising text, computers are actually better at that. So we\u2019re moving away into our own human territory, play and images,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

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Co-founders Matthew Ford and Kevin Gosschalk are both from game design background, and third co-founder Chris Macauley has a marketing background.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More than 2400 sites are currently using the software, and Ford says they\u2019ve stopped 14 million spam attacks already.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ford says the strength of the idea comes from the universal hatred of captchas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA captcha stops spammers from abusing websites so they\u2019re necessary but the amazing thing is that there are 280 million of those twisty letter ones being solved by people all over the world, but people hate them. Humans are investing so much time into something they just hate doing, and so obviously it\u2019s a solution that needs to be updated,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ford says the software is genuinely fun, and is faster and has a much higher completion rate than twisty letter captcha options.<\/p>\n

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\u201cReplacing twisty letters with games is actually much faster. And more importantly, 96% of the people we\u2019ve been testing finished it. They don\u2019t give up and click off. I actually haven\u2019t seen anyone fail, so I don\u2019t know what the 4% are doing, maybe their cat jumped on the keyboard at the key moment,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The software is currently free to use, but the team at SwipeAds have several plans to monetise it eventually.<\/p>\n

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\u201cInvestors love to see eyeballs; we\u2019re just getting to use the solution at first so we\u2019re not worrying about money. Once we\u2019ve got those eyeballs, there are several ways to monetise it,\u201d Ford says, adding they can work brand images into the games as a way of advertising, provided it doesn\u2019t slow the program or diminish the fun.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is eyeballs and engagement, and that\u2019s what advertisers really want. Captchas are one of the few opportunities where you know that\u2019s exactly what they\u2019re looking at,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The team of three is currently self-funding their work. They\u2019re not too fazed about the fact the major provider of captchas, and therefore their main competitor, is tech superpower Google.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe love it. Google are a great company and they\u2019ve got a lot of things drawing their attention so we\u2019re not too worried about it right now. We have a different offering, I\u2019d like them to work with us because we both have to recognise we have a problem, everyone hates captchas,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

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But the end goal isn\u2019t necessarily being bought by Google.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur dream end goal is fun captcha to be everywhere. So we\u2019ll do whatever it takes, but there are many ways to get to that dream. I\u2019d love to keep working on it forever, so if Google did buy us, I\u2019d be out of a job,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n

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As a games designer with decades of experience across Atari and Microsoft, Ford says he\u2019s delighted to see games flourishing out of the entertainment sector and into business.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cGames are the new lingo, they\u2019re universal now. We know enough about making casual games now that seriously anyone can play. It\u2019s so great to see the rise of games,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A spam-fighting start-up from Brisbane has launched their gamified alternative to computer tests that ensure a user is human, known<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}