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Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

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Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#41

Post by lisper »

ladberg wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a patent on pretty much anything is a relatively straightforward (if somewhat arduous) bureaucratic process. I got one on a device that lets you communicate faster than light: https://www.google.com/patents/US20030133714 Of course it doesn't actually work, but figuring out why makes an interesting exercise.

Is it because quantum entangled particles propagate their changes at the speed of light? Making the invention work, just not any faster than normal methods?

No, it's a little more subtle than that. If you really want to know, the answer is in this paper:

http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

Or if you prefer, this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#42

Post by gambiting »

chatmasta wrote: post #19
nadavami wrote: post #6

This makes me think of userbinator's comment from yesterday's Google Memory Loss post. To add insult to injury, if you do try to make complex and slightly varying queries and exhaust its result pages in an effort to find something you know exists, very often it will think you're a robot and present you with a CAPTCHA, or just ban you completely (solving the CAPTCHA just gives you another, and no matter how many you s…

I think most people don’t realize this “endless” CAPTCHA is actually an average of three iterations. You’re supposed to stop when you see no squares with X in them. That is, you should click submit even when there are zero squares matching the CAPTCHA criteria. Once you realize this it’s way less confusing, and in fact it even clearly states the instructions at the top of the CAPTCHA. But it’s super confusing and def…

Nope, I've been caught in captchas which kept on going for about 5 minutes until the algorithm finally decided it had enough. Even when there were no tiles to click anymore, I would click ok and then more would appear and it just kept on going and going and going.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#43

Post by peteretep »

nextInt wrote: post #25
donatj wrote: post #21

This is vicious, fraudulent and should be illegal.

Lol why should it be illegal? It's your service, you can block however you want

Companies who've found themselves in a monopoly position don't get to make that choice without legal scrutiny, for good reason.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#44

Post by Kirol »

Something like this is used by russian insurance companies. They should sell motor third-party liability insurance online and prices are limited by the law. It's not profitable enough for them so they boycot such sales. When you want to by such insurance online they send you SMS verification code, which you must enter on their site. The trick is that this SMS message contains 8-10 letters and some of them are unicode letters and you have only 2-3 minutes to enter it manually, copy-paste is blocked.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#45

Post by Santosh83 »

userbinator wrote: post #10
nadavami wrote: post #6

This makes me think of userbinator's comment from yesterday's Google Memory Loss post. To add insult to injury, if you do try to make complex and slightly varying queries and exhaust its result pages in an effort to find something you know exists, very often it will think you're a robot and present you with a CAPTCHA, or just ban you completely (solving the CAPTCHA just gives you another, and no matter how many you s…

I thought this item would be related to that very popular item... I saw it mentioned in discussion. At work I just recently managed to trip it three times in one day, which I consider a record since in the past I've encountered it at most a few times a week. What's more infuriating is that my queries were far less complex than the ones that tripped it before (trying to find information about some API constants), basi…

Happened to me too, but not over my normal DSL IP, but while browsing through Tor. As you note, one CAPTCHA is replaced by another seemingly without end. I gave up after 3 or so tries and switched to DDG, which is what I use when browsing over Tor. It's Google's loss, certainly not mine.

Which shows how important it is for Internet health that we have search competitors to Google who maintain their own indexes. No one company should become the sole practical gateway to the Net.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#46

Post by Shank »

mirimir wrote: post #29
Torn wrote: post #20

I've been on the receiving end of this when using some VPNs -- after a few you realise you're being stonewalled. It's an _incredibly_ frustrating experience for real users caught in this

I guess they figure "real users" don't use VPNs. I see this occasionally, but just change servers. And it's typically just temporary. Affected servers are OK in a day or so.

You can’t just green light any known VPN IP ranges though because they’re dynamic, and if you did, bots would just resort to using VPNs to bypass normal IP blocking.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#47

Post by yoz-y »

Freak_NL wrote: post #39
yoz-y wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience. It would give me “select cars until none are visible” and it would be replacing the last car by another one for a long time. Then, when there are finally none, it would just offer another captcha, such a as “click on storefronts until there are none”. And so on and on

Their mapping AI isn't going to train itself, and unlike the proofreading CAPTCHA, this one actually benefits Google's bottom line by providing free input for a proprietary data set. These Google CAPTCHA's are deployed all over the internet, but you mostly won't notice them until you use a VPN. When you do, you get them at what seems to be their strictest setting: multiple rounds of 'click the object that is a car/st…

I do not blame Google, they do what they do for their own benefit. However, when I do get to solve a never ending captcha in a mobile app, while being logged with a user account, while buying a cinema ticket—I get really pissed. Not at Google, but at whoever thought that putting a captcha there was a good idea.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#48

Post by josteink »

userbinator wrote: post #10
nadavami wrote: post #6

This makes me think of userbinator's comment from yesterday's Google Memory Loss post. To add insult to injury, if you do try to make complex and slightly varying queries and exhaust its result pages in an effort to find something you know exists, very often it will think you're a robot and present you with a CAPTCHA, or just ban you completely (solving the CAPTCHA just gives you another, and no matter how many you s…

I thought this item would be related to that very popular item... I saw it mentioned in discussion. At work I just recently managed to trip it three times in one day, which I consider a record since in the past I've encountered it at most a few times a week. What's more infuriating is that my queries were far less complex than the ones that tripped it before (trying to find information about some API constants), basi…

> I am not a robot. I am not a competitor scraping your pages or doing anything else against your ToS. I am just an intelligent human with over two decades of Internet searching experience enthusiastically using your service for the exact purpose it claims to do: to find something on the Internet.

Maybe it’s time to stop using Google and use another search engine which actually treat you like a human being, like DuckDuckGo.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#49

Post by shakna »

lisper wrote: post #36
AgentME wrote: post #7

That's literally what it takes to get something patented? For better or worse, maybe by patenting it, we won't see that solution used in many products from other companies. Hmm, maybe I should start thinking up annoying things that future software might do for profit, and patent them now to stop companies from doing them for a while.

Getting a patent on pretty much anything is a relatively straightforward (if somewhat arduous) bureaucratic process. I got one on a device that lets you communicate faster than light: https://www.google.com/patents/US20030133714 Of course it doesn't actually work, but figuring out why makes an interesting exercise.

> Of course it doesn't actually work, but figuring out why makes an interesting exercise.

I've always found that kind of interesting. The US lets you patent just about anything.

But in my home country, Australia, one of the patent requirements is that it actually appears to function in the way you are claiming it does. ("The application must be for something patentable, like a practical adaption, not for an idea or principle.")

I wonder if that has any impact on patent trolling, or if it's just as pervasive.

Re: Blocking via an Unsolvable CAPTCHA

#50

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

chx wrote: post #22
paulgb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe by patenting it, we won't see that solution used in many products from other companies My favorite in this genre is IBM's patent on patent trolling: https://www.google.com/patents/US20070244837

Then why they didn't weaponize it against patent trolls?

Maybe they license it out!
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