MicrostockGroup

To check my earnings on 123rf I was just asked to fill in a captcha.  I went to another page and went back to earnings to test it and was asked to fill in a captcha again. That is a real nuisance especially  for obsessive checkers like me.  What's the point if we are already signed in?

ugh - definitely annoying.

They must be create this cause of traffic you create.

Hate it!   What lame focus group thought this was a good idea?   If my bank (Chase) doesn't need it, why does a middle tier stock agency feel the need?

LOL you're probably right!!

I don't get this. Its a nuicance, and utterly unnecessary. Hope alex will come in and explain the reason behind it


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=44.052654,9.836627

Alex, it makes sense and I agree that the software developers should get in touch with you first before bombarding your (or any agency's) hardware with such amounts of requests.

I'd rather have a captcha than no sales, that's for sure!

Now I can't see my stats at all, because I get a server not found error message right after entering the captcha: Firefox can't find the server at www.123rf.comlogin.php.

I tried several times...

I went to update my earnings for the poll and can't get the earnings page. I get the "not authorized" error.

Hi Alex!

Thank you for the clarification. I am the author of Microstock Report, an Android widget that shows microstock earnings. My app is installed on about 200 phones and checks the earnings twice an hour. If I imagine a rainy day scenario (each user has the phone turned on all the time, with the widget on their homepage, everyone has 123RF account enabled), it's approximately one request each 10 seconds. I have to log in, download commission_stable_ajax.php, parse it and find the earnings. That's quite a lot of work for both my app and your server, I agree with that (and that's just one little widget with really few users).

If I could use a public API, I'd send one POST request and get a small XML back - and that's it. Less work for my app (and for my users' phones), less bandwidth for your server. And we both would benefit from such API - if your contributors can check their earnings on their phones, they don't have to log into your site to do it. And logging into your site requires far more bandwidth due to all those images, scripts and styles they need to download.

Having said that, the only question that remains is: Do you have any idea how fast you could create such API?

While I find the captchas a pain I do applaud working with companies that actually communicate with us.

It would be pretty slick to have an api for accessing your data via a 3rd party that had a separate server and a different password - that way the worst that a 3rd party program could do even if it got hacked would be to access your download data - no way to swipe your earnings.

Perhaps that's how it's supposed to work, but it's not happening.

I look at the download list (downloaded_stats.php, not the earnings page) and this just started having the capcha. But I don't log out ever - I close the tab or move to another site in that tab. I've had to input the captcha twice today - I checked stats once this morning and once this evening. Something other than logging out is resetting things so I have to prove to capcha that I'm human again.

I could live with once per login (which is what Shutterstock does), but having to do it every time I look at the page (given that it's a new browser session, or new tab or whatever it is that's triggered me getting the capcha again) is really irritating.

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the clarification. This works better for me, but I don't understand why it requires an extra page, and the captcha isn't on the login page itself.

Cheers