Capturing, processing, and protecting information

Companies have been quick to realize the money$-$and space$-$saving aspects of electronic information. However, capturing this data can take many forms.

CASE STUDY

Luis von Ahn came up with an innovative way to provide both security to websites and increased efficiency of digitizing printed texts. It quickly became standard practice to require online consumers to decipher a series of letters and numbers to prove there was a human purchasing a certain product and not a spammer. However, Ahn saw this action of deciphering random letters and numbers not only as a way to guard against spammers, but also as a chance to have consumers of the world help digitize texts with faded ink or font that a computer has yet to be programmed to decipher.

You are now likely to be asked to decipher two series of letters or numbers, one string being the security code that proves you are a person and not a spammer, and another series that comes from a hard$-$to$-$decipher text. You as the decoder are then providing the much needed service of deciphering what is written on the page at a collective rate of $2$ years' worth of newspapers each month.

From the details of this case study, it seems that are used to create the initial digital copies of the texts.