When you make an account in some website, why do they ask you to type in some word displayed there?

They do this to prevent SPAM BOTS from creating accounts - as a computer program can be designed to fill out THOUSANDS of identical forms (and thus creating 1,000 different accounts).

But by using a CAPTCHA (the "scrambled word thing") - the automated program is NOT able to decode what is written, and thus it can't create an account (or log into it).

As for the WHY behind it - they would rather (slightly) annoy the average user than deal with a flood of SPAM (which would drive a LOT more people away) ;););););)

Doing this helps the website in many ways, primarily to prevent spam bots from invading the website and causing havoc by searching out email addresses or using up bandwidth allocated to the website and keeping underage children from gaining access.

It also insures a live person with the age higher than say 7 or so is attempting to create an account with enough understanding to decipher the scrambled letters, in other words a small underage child would have difficulty understanding and not given access to create a account.

It's called a, "CAPTCHA."

Here's a detailed explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

The only reason I beat you kr_toron is because I'm a dog and we rule.