A racial slur that appeared in the CAPTCHA code on a Georgia Department of Public Health website has sparked an investigation by officials and Microsoft.
The slur was flagged by Twitter user @DanieEve, who tweeted a photo of the CAPTCHA code, which is used to determine whether a human or a bot is entering information on the site. @DanieEve tagged the Georgia Department of Public Health in the tweet.
“A Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) website for scheduling COVID-19 tests experienced an issue yesterday when it displayed an offensive computer-generated CAPTCHA code,” a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Public Health told 360aproko News, via email. “The code, which DPH has no control over, is used by Microsoft to determine whether a user is real or a spam robot. At DPH’s urgent request, Microsoft has assigned a team to investigate and rectify the problem to ensure it does not happen again. DPH joins all those who were offended by this randomly generated display and is pressing Microsoft to explain why safeguards were not in place to have prevented this from happening in the first place.”
“We are appalled by the offensive text displayed,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Fox News via email. “Our immediate investigation concluded that it was randomly generated using a third-party service. It is our highest priority to ensure that offensive text does not occur again.”
COVID-19 has caused 2,922 deaths in Georgia, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 12.1 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, with over 3 million in the U.S. The disease has accounted for at least 551,271 deaths around the world, including at least 132,723 in the U.S.
