Likes to think

All those CAPTCHA lovers out there, shed a tear. Yet more loss of security!!

Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHAs are broken down by spammers.

Not that we didn’t know that, but still - the figures aren’t good.

I downloaded AVG 8.0 about a week ago. It’s great, easy to use and very quick.

I spotted however, that the new Link Checker that works while you search with sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN – doesn’t seem to do what I’d like it to do.

I’ve looked at the HTTP requests going to and from Google when I search, and it looks like AVG are checking nearly every single link on the search page. “Great” you might think, “fantastic, I can feel safer while surfing”.

From looking at the HTTP requests, it seems that each link is being followed (included sponsored links) with no change in use-agent requests, or the like. This means that it appears to be throwing artificial
clicks every which way.

Does anyone know more about this?

Am I worrying over nothing?

Or goes AVG, Google, Yahoo and MSN all handle data a little differently for these requests?
I’ve disabled the Link Checker for now – but that doesn’t stop the millions of other web users out there with AVG installed – from taking away AdWords credits and fudging my stats.

Anyone?