The name wasn't invented until 2003, but yes.
replyGuestbooks, contact forms, signup pages, and the like started receiving automated abuse approximately five minutes after they were invented. It didn't take long after that for people to start including a question they expected to be easy for a person and hard to automate with a script.
What's relatively new is CAPTCHAs merely to browse a site. There are few faster ways to get me to close your site, and maybe send you an unfriendly email.
My first guestbook asked Hagar or Roth. Answering correctly got your message added to the book. Answering Hagar got you sent to an infinite redirect loop for being either a bot or a moron.
replySo in the past few years? Oh dear, no. Captchas have been in common use for much longer than that. reCAPTCHA has been around almost 20 years.
replyThey were introduced in 1997, although I personally didn't start seeing them until a couple of years later.
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