• Facebook Implements Social Captchas For Data Downloads

    Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

    Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    Along with the barrage of news today, Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the social network will start implementing a “social captcha,” to verify identities of members if they are logging on from different places. Specifically, he said that members would have to answer questions about their friends or identify them in a picture to download your data from Facebook.

    Apparently, when you choose to “Download Your Information” from your account settings, Facebook will implement the Captcha. Facebook actually filed a patent for social captchas back in September.

    However, it’s hard to know how secure the captchas will be until we see an actual implementation for data downloads. The Social Captcha has a number of other use cases, including password recovery. The idea is definitely interesting and probably welcome to some, considering the amusing Captcha-fails we always see.

    Photo Credit/Flickr/FredMikeRudy

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