why to ask if you are a bot?

Hi, have you even seen when you come to register on a forums. Why does it make you a question to prove you are not a robot if they already has security code?
Paul Weinstock

 

By security code you mean CAPTCHAs? They can bypassed, in fact I believe at least Live/Hotmail has been suffering from broken CAPTCHA, same goes for Google blogs.

AFAIK asking if one is a bot, or using more advanced stuff, such as asking the registering person to answer a simple math question adds another layer to the game of preventing bots from autoregistering.

 

...And thereby protecting the forums from spam and unwanted annoyances

 

I bet, you must like this post:

http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2008/10/10/cracking-captcha-as-a-business/