Ticketmaster Dumping Captcha in Favor of Easier Verification System

Ticketmaster is finally getting rid of its Captcha verification system! In its place will be a simpler process in which people can answer questions with normal phrases like "freezing temperatures" or multiple-choice options instead of hard-to-read gibberish.

Captcha, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, was put in place to stop robots from buying up large blocks of tickets for scalpers to re-sell at an inflated price. As the bots got more sophisticated, Captcha's questions got more difficult to read. And as we can attest after trying and failing to buy concert tickets only to see them appear on sites like StubHub minutes later, the bots were still winning.


According to the BBC, the new technology comes from start-up company Solve Media, and users in a trial study are happier. "We're starting to see an uptick in fan satisfaction," said Kip Levin, Ticketmaster's executive vice president of eCommerce. "We're happy with what we've seen from a security standpoint as well." He also noted that people are solving the questions with an average of seven seconds whereas Captcha often took 14 seconds.

Here's hoping that the system is implemented ASAP.