Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#121

Post by cr0sh » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #58

noir_lord wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point a webcam at the screen and wire a mouse to the computer controlling the webcam, you'd have to simulate the computer moving the mouse like a human would but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

You've now forced spammers to purchase webcams. And write code or whatever to make realistic mouse movements. This is expensive. Whatever they're doing likely isn't worth it anymore.

fake-users-as-a-service business op?

I can see it being possible - racks of "robot arms" that move mice based on whatever criteria is needed (in this case, reCaptcha).

It works for 3D printing, as well as device testing - so in theory, this could be done too...

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#122

Post by dudus » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

This is reCAPTCHA v2. There's even a v3 that does not have a checkbox at all. Is just a Javascript API that gives you a score between 1.0 and 0.0 on how likely a user is a bot or not. I suspect it uses the same ideas of this one, maybe more since the article is a bit outdated.

https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2#inst...

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#123

Post by drusepth » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #41

teilo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those images are infuriating! Click all boxes with traffic lights. Ok, well, this one box just barely contains the bottom right corner of the traffic light. Click. Nope, that little corner didn't count. Try again. Ok, well on this one, the right side of the traffic light is only barely over the line, so I won't click it. Nope, that sliver of the light mattered this time. MF!

I'm convinced the ambiguity is intentional. What I don't get is what answer they expect in those scenarios.

I always figure they're looking for a population consensus. They're doing image recognition at scale and these are clearly ambiguous, hard images to classify. They could easily have a few people at Google say, "I determine this is a storefront" and make that the "correct" answer, but I think they're more interested in a consensus of what most "normal" people would classify as a storefront, especially in potentially-volatile classifications where real humans might argue over the answer. They can skip the argument and just know which side will win it.

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#124

Post by rtkwe » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #74

etiam wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always figured the main point was behavioral profiling on mouse and keystroke trajectories.

They seem to keep adding categories though, which makes me suspect that it is all about ML training. Recently it's chimneys and bridges (although that one may be older). It's always annoying though.

The likely answer is a bit of both. They use the image tests because it's something that is still kind of hard to do for computers and then uses a small percentage of the boxes as unknown tests to improve some ML algorithm. Unfortunately as computer vision has gotten better they've had to make the challenges harder to the point where they're quite low quality and sometimes count very small features qualifying images. My least favorite is labeling 'cars' because it can be hard to tell if it wants to count cars way off in the distance through the adversarial noise they add to the images.

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#125

Post by rtkwe » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #45

eridius wrote: post #43

Lately I've been getting reCAPTCHA prompts all the time even though I'm not browsing in incognito mode and haven't cleared cookies. All I'm doing is running a very basic ad blocker, using Safari (which blocks third-party tracking), and very rarely loading a Google site. The most interaction I have with Google is when I end up having to use my corporate Google account as SSO for some other site. Given that I'm not doi…

Randomized user agent also seems to trigger reCAPTCHA without real cause. Should be an ADA violation for doing that.

ADA? Americans with Disabilities Act? Why would that have any bearing on user agent randomization?

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#126

Post by Scene_Cast2 » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

kzzzznot wrote: post #103

ivanbakel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's speculated that you're recorded as being a useful classifier if you answer correctly on initial test captchas, so you get given Google's datasets for machine learning. It would explain why you get picture tests even after you should definitely pass the check.

If that is true that is a huge breach of trust. Are these practices ever audited?

By whom? For what? (Meaning - probably not, unless you count a few Googlers sanity checking launches)

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#127

Post by afandian » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

xirdstl wrote: post #120

clairity wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just preemtively say no and leave the site. this is just another tracking vector for google and it should be discouraged. i'm generally against this type of gating, where the people doing the right thing get punished disproportionately (even small slices of time add up to wasting thousands of human-years over the population) just to combat the tiny number of bad actors. target the bad actors directly. it's the same f…

I'm getting closer to doing that. Lately, I check the box, and if I'm presented with images, I leave. I have also trained myself to wait a few seconds before clicking the box, which seems to help assert my humanity.

Wait til it's standing between you and your bank account.

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#128

Post by codeulike » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

Its getting weird when you have to fill that box in with pen and paper

Marci Robin was buying a Fiat 500X from a West Palm Beach, Florida dealership, and was in the final stages of signing all the paperwork, when she was presented with a strange but simple question: was she a robot?

This wasn’t online or anything, she was right there, in person, in front of the sales person, who wanted her to check a box, with a pen, on real paper, confirming that she was not, in fact, a robot. She claims she isn’t.

https://jalopnik.com/dealership-makes-woman-sitting-right-in...

edit: and the original tweet: https://twitter.com/MarciRobin/status/998030243981033472

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#129

Post by jammygit » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

kevingrahl wrote: post #54

scrooched_moose wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is noscript still the best for that? I haven't looked at other options in a long time.

If you want more granularity I’d suggest giving uMatrix a try. You’ll basically break every site at first and have to make adjustments for every site you visit (whitelist certain Ressourcen on a per domain basis) but I think it’s well worth it. NoScript (which is totally fine) just blocks all JS, uMatrix can block much more.

I found umatrix required me to turn so many things on for the average site that I wasn't sure it was blocking anything significant anymore. I suppose I have up after a while

Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?

#130

Post by peterwwillis » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

Back in the late 90s, my teenage friends and I were writing Visual Basic programs to automatically click ad banners and surf webpages to generate money. I doubt it's significantly more difficult to do the same now with a captcha box.