Tiago
23 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
23 lines
1.9 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. The main principle behind implementing a proof-of-work CAPTCHA like Cap includes **proving effort** instead of basic fingerprinting or solving puzzles to verify whether someone is human.
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## Privacy & security
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Cap doesn't use cookies or telemetry by default. No data is collected or stored in our servers.
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By default, Cap's server library uses the following defaults:
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- **Challenge storage:** Challenges are only stored in memory on the server to prevent tampering and expire after 10 mins
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- **Token storage:** Only hashed tokens are stored persistently (in `.data/tokensList.json` by default) to validate user sessions, and they also expire (20 minutes by default).
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## Why Proof-of-work?
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Every CAPTCHA can eventually be solved, whether by AIs, algorithms or humans paid via CAPTCHA farms — 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. PoW 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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For a deeper dive into the technical aspects, you might find [this research paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374638786_Proof-of-Work_CAPTCHA_with_password_cracking_functionality) useful.
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