In 1997, a group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and a team at cybersecurity company Sanctum each independently developed a way to thwart bots using distorted text. To post about said topics anyway, they would trick the bots by replacing specific letters with numbers or symbols (a method that eventually evolved into jargon called leetspeak).īy the late ‘90s, computer scientists had realized that these computer-confounding lines of text could help prevent data theft by halting scammer algorithms. Early internet forum users realized that moderator programs monitored words related to certain sensitive topics. Ironically enough, hackers essentially created CAPTCHAs in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. CAPTCHA tests arrived in the late ‘90s thanks to hackers.
