What's up with ...

This week was more about explaining the how & why of things than answering people's questions. So instead of a Fun Fact, here's a What's up with...

The question:
What's up with the computer making me type funny letters?

Vague enough for you? This is a very typical start to a computer question ... if you don't know much about computers, it follows that you won't have the technical vocabulary to ask the right questions. So I get to be a detective-translator to figure out what they're talking about. In this case, after a few rounds of clarification, it was this:
The answer:
Word verification is a pretty smart idea that websites are using to prevent spam. Spam robots aren't smart enough to read text if it looks "funny," so a lot of websites block spam by having the user type a string of funny looking letters to prove they're an actual human visitor to the site.