The Captcha is a security tool used by millions of websites. It asks you to type random words and numbers in order to prove that you’re not a robot. We developed a platform that replaces these words with the names and photos of missing persons. This way, anyone could use the captcha on their websites to help find missing people. They just had to replace the regular captcha for the missing captcha. With this technology, it was impossible to ignore the information, since people would have to read and then retype the names of missing persons. And if anyone knew anything about someone missing, they just needed to click on a button above the Captcha to inform the NGO.

We first launched an online video on our social networks, inviting companies and website owners to install the Missing Captcha on their websites. Through a PR strategy the idea spread through social and regular media, becoming news on all different types of vehicles. After that, many websites started to adopt the Missing Captcha as their security tool. And since it is an open source platform, it was pretty easy to do so: they just needed to copy the code from our platform and use it on their websites.

So far, 43 websites have adopted the Missing Captcha as their security tool. 406,000 people correctly filled in the Missing Captcha, which means that all of them actually paid attention to the info on a missing person. 122 people clicked on the “I have information on this person” button.