Faced with stricter Internet security measures, some spammers have begun
borrowing a page from corporate America’s playbook: they are outsourcing.
Sophisticated spammers are paying people in India, Bangladesh, China and
other developing countries to tackle the simple tests known as captchas, which
ask Web users to type in a string of semiobscured characters to prove they are
human beings and not spam-generating robots.
The going rate for the work ranges from 80 cents to $1.20 for each 1,000
deciphered boxes, according to online exchanges like Freelancer.com, where
dozens of such projects are bid on every week.
