tiago
20 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
20 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
# Effectiveness
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Cap significantly reduces spam and abuse on websites and web apps. It won't stop _everything_ (no CAPTCHA is foolproof), however, it minimizes the potential for abuse by making it expensive.
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The main principle behind implementing a proof-of-work CAPTCHA like Cap includes **proving effort** instead of fingerprinting or solving visual puzzles.
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## Privacy & security
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Cap doesn't use cookies or any type of telemetry by default. No data is collected or stored on any central servers as it's fully self-hosted.
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## Why proof-of-work?
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Every CAPTCHA can eventually be solved, whether by AIs, algorithms, reverse-engineering and spoofing fingerprints, or humans paid via CAPTCHA farms, and this results in an endless cat-and-mouse game between attackers and defenders. The crucial difference lies in the cost imposed on attackers.
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Cap's goal is to make automated abuse expensive while keeping the experience fast and virtually invisible for real users. Proof-of-work is a perfect balance for this issue, stopping abuse by requiring computational effort rather than relying solely on human verification methods that bots continuously learn to mimic.
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Imagine sending 10,000 spam messages costs $1, potentially earning $10 – a profitable venture. If Cap increases the computational cost so that sending those messages now costs $100, the spammer loses $90. This eliminates the financial incentive.
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Cap's proof-of-work is heavily inspired by [Hashcash](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2482110_Hashcash_-_A_Denial_of_Service_Counter-Measure). Our instrumentation challenges are inspired by Twitter and YouTube's own custom challenges.
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