Ticket Takers

Bots and CAPTCHAs

How do ticket resellers get their tickets? The answer is not totally clear-cut. Marketplace asked many ticket brokers for interviews, and only one, Mario Livich of Vancouver, would agree to speak on camera. He told us the tickets he sells come from a variety of suppliers, and that “If somebody comes and sells us a ticket, we don’t ask them ‘how did you get that ticket?’ We don’t.”

Still, the sheer speed of event sellouts strongly suggests that buyers are using automated processes (or robots, or “bots” for short) to shop online.

This may surprise you, because most online ticket sale sites have features designed to keep robots out. If you’ve ever placed an order or posted an ad online, chances are good you’ve seen something like this:

The idea is that it’s easy for a person to read the words, but hard for a robot, so typing the words in a box when you place your order is proof that you’re human. One of these graphics-with-distorted words is called a CAPTCHA, which is short for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” (If you’re curious, you can learn more about CAPTCHAs and Turing Tests at Wikipedia.)

But how good is the technology at keep bots out? For our segment, PhD student Allan Caine demonstrated a piece of software systematically reading and decoding CAPTCHAs. The program took him just a week to write.

Posted on February 27, 2008
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