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CAPTCHAs -- those misshapen funhouse mirror letters you have to decipher in order to gain access to various online tools -- are so annoying to some people that they'd rather turn their back on a website than fiddle with them. Worse yet, CAPTCHAs don't always work. "CAPTCHAs can stop most bots, but the worst bots know how to get past CAPTCHA," said Distil Networks CEO Rami Essaid. If an annoyance contest were held between passwords and CAPTCHAs, passwords would probably win, but not by much. CAPTCHA -- Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart -- was created to foil bots attempting to mass-create accounts at websites. Once created, those accounts could be exploited by online lowlifes for malicious ends, such as spewing spam. However there are signs that the technology that uses distressed letters to weed out machines from humans may have outlived its usefulness. When users are presented with a CAPTCHA, they are 12 percent less likely, on average, to continue with what they came to do at the website, according to a Distil Networks study released earlier this month. That number is even worse for mobile users, who abandon their intended activity 27 percent of the time they're confronted with a CAPTCHA, the study suggests. Captcha: Advantages and Disadvantages Captcha is a way to differentiate between an automated computer program and a human. It is a box with distorted text that must be deciphered in order to enter free email services, online polls, and to complete online purchases. Advantages: Distinguishes between a human and a machine Makes online polls more legitimate Reduces spam and viruses Makes online shopping safer Diminishes abuse of free email account services Disadvantages: Sometimes very difficult to read Are not compatible with users with disablilities Time-consuming to decipher Technical difficulties with certain internet browsers May greatly enhance Artificial Intelligence