Required to enter a code when messaging

In the last few days the system started to prompt me to enter a code each time I send a message. I'm not a new member, sent hundreds of messages before, and this just started happening few days ago.

Any reason? Do other members experience this as well?

The site adds that when it is seeing a site-wide increase in attempted spam. It's not always in effect. A member can trigger it for their own account as well, but right now, that isn't the case.

It's really annoying. I have a few months long conversation with one of the members, and all the sudden the site suspects it's spam?? Out of the blue? Not to mention that I'm a Gold member.

It is not targeted at you specifically. The site is experiencing an overall increase in spam and the CAPTCHA is put in place to mitigate it; everyone is getting it.

That's a relief.. (well, not really).

I wonder how long it’ll go on, it really slows things down, and it often doesn’t accept the correctly typed code so you have to insert codes several times.   It’s tiresome.  

I just have noticed too. I think it's very annoying and not a good solution against spamming. I hope there will be a lot of reactio, they see it and stop this. They should have a detection system of people spamming

I was wondering what it was doing.  Thanks for the explanation Martin.

It's been in use for a while and is only in place during active spam attacks, from what I've been told 

I'm sorry, but if someone wants to send spam, how the code is going to stop them? They will enter the message and then enter the code and click on "Send". This is so stupid and annoying.

It can stop bots

So because of few bots they hurt their members, including paying customers..

Got it.

I'm going to cancel my Gold membership.

Because people write bots to do all the work and bots, in general, can't solve them as well. It stops lots of those, decreases the amount of active spam, limits resource usage, and gives time to handle the accounts.

It isn't a few people manually sending messages and it's not a few bots. A few wouldn't cause very many issues. 

It should be disabled for chat between friends.

There are many ways to fight spam. Requiring a code for every single message is one of the worst, especially considering that 90% of the time the code doesn't work and you need to do it at least 2-3 times.

But I probably shouldn't be surprised - the whole user interface of this forum is terrible, not user friendly and full of bugs.

It sucks, especially for those of us with visual impairments.

  I learnt by accident that it is CAP sensitive...

That is how i have done the majority of my learning :-)