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Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

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Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#21

Post by jesseb »

nprateem wrote: post #15

These really make my blood boil. I continually trip whatever it is that makes Google think I'm a bot (probably a VPN + ublock). Sometimes it takes upwards of 5 tries (each with 3 or 4 tests) to pass. After the first failure the audio one stops working, and sometimes that's unintelligible. I honestly wonder how anyone who's even slightly visually impaired is supposed to pass them. I wouldn't be surprised if in the not…

I run Linux, use my own VPN, and use Firefox with uMatrix. CAPTCHAs are one of the most user-hostile things I experience on the web. I've had to give up on registering for sites, or signing into sites I'm already registered with, because after literally minutes I still hadn't gotten through. I actively try to avoid sites that use CAPTCHA but unfortunately it's not always possible.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#22

Post by draw_down »

dplgk wrote: post #6
rahuldottech wrote: post #5

tbh I'm sick of just how often I have to solve those click-on-image captchas. It's a pain.

You don't need to prepend your statement with tbh unless we are to presume things you say without that prefix are dishonest.

That’s really silly. I think it’s fine to say.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#23

Post by slezyr »

zaarn wrote: post #16

For Google ReCaptcha, simply install the Buster addon, it solves the captcha for you via speech-to-text. For captcha's in general, I think we should stop pretending that we can prevent bot traffic from a dedicated attacker without annoying the users. A simple captcha from the 2000's (the ones with lines over a word or number of letters and numbers), should be good enough to hold off basic script kiddies. Same for a b…

Old captchas allowed you to see the content without need to pass it. I'm too tired to see cloudfront pages with recaptcha.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#24

Post by outime »

Google reCAPTCHA is the absolute worst. It makes me solve several puzzles very often, usually when I use a mobile network and I’m not logged in with any Google account. It’s so frustrating that most of the times I find a reCAPTCHA I give up before trying and just go elsewhere e.g. when a site uses reCAPTCHA for sign up or after the first failed login, I’ll most likely skip if I don’t absolutely need to access such website.

Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s getting tired!

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#26

Post by jrootabega »

nprateem wrote: post #15

These really make my blood boil. I continually trip whatever it is that makes Google think I'm a bot (probably a VPN + ublock). Sometimes it takes upwards of 5 tries (each with 3 or 4 tests) to pass. After the first failure the audio one stops working, and sometimes that's unintelligible. I honestly wonder how anyone who's even slightly visually impaired is supposed to pass them. I wouldn't be surprised if in the not…

If you're using an adblocker, you probably also don't have any positively identifying google cookies, which has become more and more synonymous with "bot" to them. They could defend it from the opposite direction: when you're logged in to google they trust they know you, so when you're not, there's a lack of trust. Not suspicion, no, but a factual lack of trust. There's plausible deniability if anyone ever claimed it's suspicion, and that they do it to punish people who want to remain independent and anonymous. But if that's the effect and they don't do anything to prevent it...

To me it feels similar to the duality of gas station "cash discounts," which have also been perceived as "credit card penalties." Or mobile providers' "free data for the music streaming service of our choice."

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#27

Post by Cacti »

nprateem wrote: post #19
Cacti wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but, to be clear, the issue isn't VPNs, it's that the VPNs you are using are also used by spammers/bots/etc. or a large amount of other people. If you set up your own VPN somewhere that is just used by you and your family (for example), you will never run into this issue. As a case in point, the same issue crops up with lots of users going through the same corporate proxy. And it's the same reason t…

What's the point of a VPN if you're easily identifiable? Surely you want to blend into a crowd?

I mean, unless you're going through additional effort, you're still identifiable through a VPN. Any web tracking, whether through cookies or through fingerprinting, still works just fine. At best you're merely making it more difficult.

Also, there is also no reason, though it would be a PITA, that you can't add your own measures to a private VPN, whether that's rotating IPs or some other measure. Is it going to keep your illegal activities truly anonymous? No, but neither is a retail VPN. It is a matter of degree and what tradeoffs you're willing to make.

As far as uses for a private VPN, the most obvious is to ensure intermediate parties, particularly on the same subnets, can't snoop on your actual traffic _content_. This isn't going to keep you anonymous from the NSA, but it sure will help against corporations (ISPs and their numerous corporate parents/cousins/siblings). Another benefit is that by protecting against packet level inspection, you are protecting yourself from many current forms of traffic shaping and bandwidth metering/throttling, as well as from limits on services you are running or the content of files you are downloading, as well as from intermediaries (e.g. ISPs) from inserting ads or additional tracking or whatever else into your (mainly web) traffic. This also comes into play not just with your normal ISP but any you are using while traveling (coffee shops, airports, hotels, and other untrusted networks).

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#28

Post by kbenson »

nprateem wrote: post #15

These really make my blood boil. I continually trip whatever it is that makes Google think I'm a bot (probably a VPN + ublock). Sometimes it takes upwards of 5 tries (each with 3 or 4 tests) to pass. After the first failure the audio one stops working, and sometimes that's unintelligible. I honestly wonder how anyone who's even slightly visually impaired is supposed to pass them. I wouldn't be surprised if in the not…

A few years back Google changed recaptcha to use a bunch of extra information to make a decision as to whether someone was a real person. This resulted in sometimes there not being any images, once you click to start the CAPTCHAS, it just shows a checkmark and let's you through. What also seems to have happened then is that they use additional I formation to make the process much harder sometimes.

Ublock never seems to matter too much for me, but the IP address used can matter a lot. Whether you're logged into gmail/Google seems to affect it positively also.

I suspect the specific VPN you're using is the source of the lion's share of the RECAPTCHA problems you're having. They are probably utilizing a range that was or is used in a way that RECAPTCHA doesn't like.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#29

Post by sbierwagen »

hedora wrote: post #4

> Google wouldn’t say what factors go into that score, other than that Google observes what a bunch of “good traffic” on a site looks like A few days ago, I signed up for some service on a new-ish laptop, and it made me pass the storefront captcha three separate times. This is yet another example of the social credit score being implemented in the US; in this case punishing users for opting out of continuous tracking…

http://jwmason.org/slackwire/on-money-debt-trust-and-central...

>People get very excited about China’s social credit system, a sort of generalization of the “permanent record” we use to intimidate schoolchildren. And ok, it does sound kind of dystopian. If your rating is too low, you aren’t allowed to fly on a plane. Think about that — a number assigned to every person, adjusted based on somebody’s judgement of your pro-social or anti-social behavior. If your number is too low, you can’t on a plane. If it’s really low, you can’t even get on a bus. Could you imagine a system like that in the US?

>Except, of course, that we have exactly this system already. The number is called a bank account. The difference is simply that we have so naturalized the system that “how much money you have” seems like simply a fact about you, rather than a judgement imposed by society.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#30

Post by wl »

nprateem wrote: post #19
Cacti wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but, to be clear, the issue isn't VPNs, it's that the VPNs you are using are also used by spammers/bots/etc. or a large amount of other people. If you set up your own VPN somewhere that is just used by you and your family (for example), you will never run into this issue. As a case in point, the same issue crops up with lots of users going through the same corporate proxy. And it's the same reason t…

What's the point of a VPN if you're easily identifiable? Surely you want to blend into a crowd?

I run a VPN from home for using at coffee shops and the like. While the proliferation of HTTPS has made sketchy networks less of a problem, DNS is still leaky.
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