Skip to main content

Blogger Use Of Mobile / Smart Phones As A Token, Augmenting / Replacing CAPTCHA Verification

Blogger has been using CAPTCHA ("word verification") screening, to verify human presence in various Blogger processes, for several years. This is necessary, to prevent spammers from automating the processes of creating new blogs, and submitting "unlock" requests for spam locked blogs. CAPTCHA verification has its weaknesses though; and as spammers have been exploiting those weaknesses for some time, Blogger recently added additional tokens in some Blogger processes.

You may be required to provide the number of your mobile / smart phone, as a token.
  • When you setup a new blog.
  • When you submit a request to have your blog unlocked after being (falsely) classified as spam.
  • When you attempt to publish too many posts in one day.

This requires that your phone receive / send SMS messages from / to Blogger, to verify your identity as a person, and not an automated process.
  1. You provide the phone number of an SMS capable mobile phone.
  2. Blogger sends a verification request message to that number.
  3. You reply to the message, and back to Blogger.
  4. Your existence as a human is now verified, and your blog can be setup (spam review can be started, post can be published).

SMS, unfortunately, is not a universally available service, on all mobile / smart phones. This creates a challenge for a few bloggers, when otherwise stressed by the situation at hand. SMS is a protocol that works best when used between phones using a common phone service. All phone services do not exchange SMS messages with all other phone services, as reliably as they interchange Internet and voice service.

This shortcoming is most common, but not uniquely so, between Blogger / Google (in North America) and various services in Asia, Africa, and other third world regions. Some phone services in North America do not have universally available SMS networks, either. People without access to a mobile / smart phone with SMS service are being left unable to make new blogs, unlock their blogs, and / or publish more than 50 posts / day.

One odd omission in CAPTCHA / SMS token use is the process of resetting forgotten passwords to Blogger and Google accounts. Blogger password resets are so easily executed that some bloggers are apparently using password resets routinely - simply remembering their email account names and passwords, and not bothering to remember Blogger accounts / passwords. This technique becomes a problem only when the email account used goes down, or is discontinued.

Using mobile / smart phone tokens seems like an excellent application for password resets, if for anything.

>> Top

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".