Tired of difficult CAPTCHA logins, a new company, Picatcha, replaces sometimes difficult text-based authentications with image-identification security so instead of trying to type out some archaic combination of words, users will just have to select all of the images with a book.

The Picatcha test makes users select from a set of eight photographs to answer image-based challenges like, select all of the images containing a basket or select all of the images containing a dog. In the end it's a lot more fun to click on the photographs than it is to try and guess the characters in a CAPTCHA.

UPDATE: "Image identification is very easy for humans but hard for bots," Satish Polisetti, co-founder of Picatcha tells LAUNCH via email. "This makes our product very secure. Compare it with text solutions - 70 lines of code or any OCR software can break them easily."

Picatcha says more than 72% of currently used CAPTCHAs can be beaten by computer algorithms.

Nearly everyone who has made an online purchase has encountered the dreaded CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) login, but according to Picatcha, these logins -- though necessary for security -- can lead to more than 18% of users abandoning your site because of usability issues.

Currently in private beta, more than 20 websites are using Picatcha.

"We have a sign-up page on our website and we give away keys to enable our solutions to websites that are interested in trying the solution," Satish says. "It is a great value addition to the websites - security and usability like never before."

Picatcha was the final year project of Berkley students, Satish and his co-founder Dhawal Mujumdar and was officially founded in July 2011.

"We did all the ground work (ethnographic studies, system design, prototyping) while we were at school," Satish says. "We incorporated the company and built the product after our graduation."

SCREENSHOTS

Users are issued challenges by Picatcha to identify items in photographs like the combs in the test above. Users click on all of the correct images before hitting submit.

It's a lot easier for users to identify images of objects than to insert difficult word combinations.

CONTACTS & LINKS

Picatcha
Website: http://www.picatcha.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/picatcha

Satish Polisetti, co-founder
Twitter: @sat_p
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/polisettisatish

Dhawal Mujumdar, co-founder
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112560822534762201498
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/idhawal
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dhawalm

LAUNCH Blog