The world's biggest online retailer, Ticketmaster, has ditched the CAPTCHA security system for something simpler to read and understand.

It has switched over to a new system made by Solve Media which, instead of asking you to type two nonsensical words that are hard to make out, presents questions or well-known phrases to translate. Those questions could also be based on brand identity, so can double as advertising too.

CAPTCHA - which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart - was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. It was introduced to stop automated spam bots from posing as human users when checking out an online store, or entering sensitive information.

Initially, it used simple, readable words, but as the bots became more sophisticated, the phrases and presentation of the words became harder to read for computers and humans alike.

Ticketmaster was using CAPTCHA to avoid bots block buying tickets for shows and music gigs in order to sell on later, but after research proved that the current system took on average 14 seconds per user to solve, it looked for another. Solve Media's solution, in trials, proved to cut that down to seven seconds per user.

Are you sad to see CAPTCHA go? Let us know in the comments below...