What is Yahoo thinking!?
So you’ve seen blogs where you need to enter a few characters to verify you’re a real person and not a super-duper-spam bots. Ever struggled to read the characters? I know a few times I smirked and thought it wasn’t that easy, but it never stopped me from getting it right.
Until today.
Yahoo! mail requires users to enter a code before they can hit send on an email now. And it’s not any code, it’s mythical super-duper-alien alphabet!

(Click here to see the whole email page - Then leave me your best guess in the comments! Andrew’s guess on the screenshot was wrong!)
Can you seriously read this? I know I have no idea what that second character is. Andrew and I got the guess wrong, and it took until our third try to find a clearly readable one! Granted, I can cope with getting it wrong once to get one that’s slightly easier to guess, but anyone with the vaguest visual disability or who isn’t fully technology-savvy will be stumped by it.
If I can quote my friend vegcat again, Yahoo! mail can bite me. For needing this verification image before hitting send on an email, and for making me use an exclamation mark in the middle of a sentence. Bite my Six Mile Bottom!

January 26th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
6uKadu
C’est frustrant ça!
January 27th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I was guessing ‘6J7ACU’ the squiggly lines don’t really help…..
January 27th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
6j3Adu.. pis ?? attends de voir les codes chinois..ils vont prendre leurs alphabet mandarin???
January 30th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Yup, I agree with Bimble - that’s what it looks like to me, too. Maybe the secret to deciphering that code is being sleep deprived and on cold tablets. (That’s me!)
January 31st, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Isn’t it ridiculous? It takes the flu and a bunch of cold medication to get anywhere near what could possibly be the right answer!
Bring on the cough syrup, baby!
February 11th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Moi j’rauis dis 6J7Acu…
July 15th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
6J7ACU