Can you prove you aren't a machine?

Increasingly ISPs and other businesses are resorting to challenge response systems in an effort to provide their users with spam free email.

Many systems only challenge suspicious looking content which isn't easily categorized as either spam or legitimate. A typical test will involve requiring the end user to answer a question about a picture or decipher some obscured text.

This of course poses problems for legitimate automated email such as order confirmations and other notifications. If the spam tool doesn't notify the user about the blocked message - they could miss important information.

While most spammers write-off mail blocked by this kind of spam email blocker software - rumor has it some have partnered with adult content providers to come up with a unique work around. Users who want to view their sites have to pass through a page which presents one of the questions poised by the spam email stopper - the information is then passed back through the spammer's automated system - and the mail goes through.

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