--- John Manko <xerid@adelphia.net> wrote:
> Does anyone know how sites like Ticketmaster.com creates
> the "Word Image" used for ticket purchase verification?

There are different ways for doing this. The simplest is to generate the image
yourself, and you can use a pseudo-caching method to pull them statically if
they are not already generated.

This method can still be automated, but it is at least more difficult than
writing a simple script, as it requires some OCR. If you want to go the extra
mile, check out this site:

http://www.captcha.net/

gimpy-r is what Yahoo! uses for their registration. These images are extremely
difficult to reliably read with a computer program, so they offer much stronger
protection against automated attacks.

If you specifically want to know what TicketMaster/CitySearch uses, you should
ask on the mod_perl mailing list, because a few of those guys work there.

Hope that helps.

Chris

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