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Quote:Dave Simmer is a computer-savvy graphic designer. Yet when he surfs the Internet, he often gets stumped by the distorted jumbles of letters and numbers that some Web sites ask users to retype to gain access.

"They keep warping them and making them longer," says the 40-year-old from Cashmere, Wash.

The visually impaired have long decried these codes, which protect sites such as Yahoo.com and Ticketmaster.com from computer programs that create scores of email accounts for spammers or buy hundreds of concert tickets for scalpers. Now, the quizzes are irritating a wider array of Web surfers as companies toughen them as part of their arms race with the spam crowd...