Is Paid Captcha Work A Real Work From Home Job?

Paid Captcha Work: Legit, Scam or Waste of Time?

You may have heard of paid Captcha work, or perhaps you've never heard of it before. Here is an overview of  this bizarre work from home data entry 'job.' While paid Captcha work is technically a data entry job because you are, well...entering data, it is not the sort of data entry work I was looking for. That and it requires so much typing to make money that your head might explode.


Oh, and you may be helping out scammers/spammers.  Learn more about this weird work from home opportunity after the jump.

(Animated pic from the talented ugvivar on photobucket.com)




What Is A Captcha, Anyway?

A Captcha is that annoying little box that verifies you are a human by having you type something.  It may be numbers, it may be English words or words in another language, it may include characters or it may be just a bunch of random gobble-dee-gook letters that really do nothing.  Some captchas can actually be very entertaining as they may say something unexpected, others can be downright frustrating and almost impossible to decipher, requiring you to try again and again and again...and again!


Why Do Websites Use Captchas?

Many websites use Captchas as a method of preventing people from being spammers or scammers.  For example, you need to fill out Captchas before setting up a Gmail account, before posting a video on Craigslist or before signing up for many various websites.  The Captcha is there to make sure that you are not a 'bot' or a computer that is running some sort of script or program to automatically sign up.

What Is Paid Captcha Work?

Paid Captcha work is often listed as a data entry job.  That is actually a stretch if you ask me.  Ok, I will concede that it does involve entering data.  But what is this stuff being used for?  Here is where it gets interesting. Check out this article on USA Today online called Cybergangs use cheap labor to break codes on social sites, or this one on the UK online publication The Register called Russian serfs paid $3 a day to break CAPTCHAs.  After reading the information in those two articles this alleged work from home data entry work doesn't seem quite as promising does it?


That Being Said, some people may actually want to give this a try for themselves.  While I don't personally know anyone who has made any money doing this, they must be out there somewhere.  Or maybe you'd live to give it a try just to see how fast you can type 1000 captchas or if you can reach the minimum payout for one of the various companies that are paying for Captcha work.

If you want to actually give this a try, here are a couple links:

QLink Group:  Email QLinkCare@gmail.com, be sure to put Captcha Entry as the subject line and provide your mail and paypal IDs

Kolotibablo: This Captcha site is available in English and in the Russian Language as well as Chinese, Hindi and Vietnamese: //www.kolotibablo.com/?ref=964791

Megatypers: This site states that their top workers make around $200 per month, which may not sound like that much but depending on where you live (or how broke you are) it may be a decent amount that you'd like to add to your monthly income by doing some data entry work from home.  http://www.megatypers.com/

DISCLAIMER: I do not endorse any of the above sites, so work for them at your own risk!!