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Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

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31–40 of 218 posts

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#31
Google: Hey, you don't have any Google login/session cookies? Not even one from a previous login (yeah, you can't fully log out)? That's wrong! Here, click on the traffic lights for 5 minutes! Or have one of those super slow fade-in fade-out captchas!

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can run the DNS through your VPN and have it use secure DNS outside of your home ISP, and then cache the DNS results on a DNS server at home.

It's not perfect but leaks will end up being pretty minimal, even in accidental situations.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#34
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…

Unfortunately Buster no longer works. Google detects it now and makes you start over.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#35
post #31

Google: Hey, you don't have any Google login/session cookies? Not even one from a previous login (yeah, you can't fully log out)? That's wrong! Here, click on the traffic lights for 5 minutes! Or have one of those super slow fade-in fade-out captchas!

Been testing captchas inadvertently quite a bit in fresh installs across multiple VMs, from what I can tell it has nothing to do with whether you have cookies or privacy configurations, it comes down to whether you use Chromium or use a shared IP. If you use Firefox even without privacy configs, expect to spend 3x the time as Chrome, that's not even including the fact that those fading images load 5x slower on Firefox. If you use a shared IP (in my case a $6/mo vpn) + Firefox, it's not even worth trying imo as it can take 3+ mins to complete captchas on most sites and it's much quicker to just open Brave to complete it in 10 seconds, the amount of tries you have to do also has nothing to do with getting all the pictures correct.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#36
post #31

Google: Hey, you don't have any Google login/session cookies? Not even one from a previous login (yeah, you can't fully log out)? That's wrong! Here, click on the traffic lights for 5 minutes! Or have one of those super slow fade-in fade-out captchas!

The fade-in fade-out captchas are especially infuriating. Captchas are already bad for UX but those which purposely slow down how fast you can solve them are on a whole different level.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#37
post #17

I find if I use VPN then google will display one on search. In particular, when I try using Opera VPN then I always get one. I decline to do them so search via bing instead. Forcing users to prove their not bots is totally the wrong approach. They should be forcing bots to prove they're human so that real humans don't see this nonsense. Easier said than done, but that's not my problem.

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…

You could just pay double ($10 or so) for a VPN that logs, has less users, more IPs, and should be able to avoid these issues.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#38
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…

Unfortunately Buster no longer works. Google detects it now and makes you start over.

Buster works if you set it to another STT service than the Google API Demo. They seem to have caught onto that one.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#39
post #21

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.

Had the same setup &, i found that on brave i can do them in 20 secs compared to 3 minutes. Not saying I support them messing with FF but at the end of the day, I need to get things done.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#40
post #14

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

Just install the buster addon; it solves the captcha automatically via speech-to-text recognition.

Except when you're getting 3min+ captchas on FF they don't give you the speech recognition option, so it's either open up chrome and do it in 15 seconds or nothing.
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