Giving my age away - the old 'hand-built by robots' advert for Fiat (I think) and Typepad's and Blogger's antispam verification systems.

Typepad do a delightful black on black system (or that's how it appears on my PC) with a sort of fingerprint design for the background.  Usually it takes about four goes before I can decipher the letters/numbers from the background - and my colour and close vision is good.

Blogger seems to need me to adjust my internet privacy settings to 'allow all cookies' and then gives brightly coloured wavy writing for me to copy.

Blogspirit once in a blue moon ask for a verification a bit like Blogger (Google) but without the need to alter settings; usually they just let me post my comments.

I guess I am left wondering if the desire to prevent "automated robots" actually just ends up putting off real people from commenting or if it is just a cunning anti-Catriona device?!