Source: Auth0 Picture this, just when you thought that you had successfully entered in all of your personal and totally accurate information, you could see the verification email on the horizon, but then it all comes crashing down. You just got CAPTCHA'D. Select all of the images that include a boat it says, it starts out innocently enough, but then you gradually realize that half of the images you clicked were blurry sideways pictures of vans. But, you soldier on, you make it through, you click that sweet sweet verify button.... and there's another page. That's right, you have to do it all over again. This is all extremely dramatic, but there is no denying, it's annoying. Sometimes you get off easy, and there is one of those benevolent little checkboxes, sometimes there are the misshapen words. What is CAPTCHA, why do we have it, and how does it work. Where It Began When doing research for this ramble I had a lot of trouble finding out who, actually invented CAPTCHA.