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Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

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Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#391

Post by Dylan16807 »

Cyph0n wrote: post #156
dredmorbius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise you've just described why this would distinguish between bots and humans. (And yes, I'm also driven to rage by slow-fade animations. A practice I can date back to Microsoft's Clippy, which, when you punched it in the fact to go away, had just one more gratuitous animation just to twist the knife that just more.)

No, it doesn't help distinguish the two, because this check can be easily circumvented by adding a small, random delay. To reiterate: the primary goal seems to be slowing down bots.

But does it slow the bot down in a meaningful way?

If you have one IP, there's a limit on captchas solved that you're going to blow through with or without the delay.

If you have a bunch of IPs, you can multithread the solving.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#392

Post by Nition »

mikro2nd wrote: post #195
crazygringo wrote: post #170

I've never understood what happened to reCAPTCHA, it was originally so great and is now just so, so toxic. Originally it was an awesome solution based on OCR'ing books that usually worked quickly on the first try, and almost never took more than two. Then it turned into a single checkbox (analyzing mouse movement) so it was even faster... and I remember some simple image-based like "select the images of cats" that we…

There's a third problem: quite a bit of the stuff they present is (almost) uniquely American and presents a recognition challenge in other cultural contexts. That yellow vehicle? Looks nothing like a bus in most other parts of the world. And so the rest of the world gets to learn what an American Bus looks like... Not, I think, what was intended.

Fourth problem: How vague the instructions are. When I'm asked to click the boxes that contain signs, do I include the poles?

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#393

Post by napsterbr »

That's exactly what happens to me on an almost daily basis. But then I decided to change my feeling from rage to revenge. Here's how:

I get the first few selections right, so the algorithm knows I'm trustworthy. Then I purposefully get the last ones wrong. This way, I'm still validated by the captcha and I get to show the middle finger to Google.

Now I smile every time I'm faced with reCaptcha :)

Highly recommend. It does take some time to figure out the patterns (when to get it right and when to get it wrong), but once you do, it just works.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#394

Post by aczerepinski »

gwoplock wrote: post #332
DownGoat wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why make me solve a Captcha to see static content? Fair point, I usually run into this when using Tor, or VPN when accessing content behind Cloudflare, and or similar services. This is some anti abuse stuff, but is often overly agressive with giving you captchas. > Why make me solve a Captcha to log in when I've already completed one to register? So attackers cannot password spray. This is typically after attackers…

> > Why make me solve a Captcha to pay utility bills? Is there some underground group of deviants going around surreptitiously paying other people's utility bills? > Sound like a strange place to have a captcha indeed. What information is needed in the form to submit it? Does it validate stuff that an attacker might want to scrape? I guess they added it for a reason. Ive seen captchas on payment forms to prevent cred…

I've even seen people beat captcha in bulk to get to a payment form. My best guess is something along the lines of mechanical turk or a room full of low wage workers doing it manually. I think the payoff of verifying stolen cards is worth enough to justify some kind of workaround.

If you host a payment form that informs the user about whether payment was accepted, you're a target.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#395

Post by SquareWheel »

thinkingemote wrote: post #176
SquareWheel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kept looking for the article. Surprised to see such a low-effort post submitted to HN.

Users have the option to flag submissions

Okay, I will flag it. This submission still received almost 400 comments. That's pretty disappointing.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#396

Post by MikeGale »

skybrian wrote: post #292
AYBABTME wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're downvoted, it's a valid point. It feels icky to use a service that you pay for, and incidentally provide free labor to Google's AI which they resell in Google Cloud as a walled garden. The result of reCaptcha isn't public as far as I can tell, and humanity probably doesn't get a net benefit from Google's monopoly on AI anymore.

People talk about "free labor" and forget all the times they were able to do Google searches or use Google Maps for free. It seems rather ungrateful? This isn't a one-sided relationship, both sides benefit.

Logical error here.

Some people avoid Google Search, Chrome etc. They are still subject to this.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#397

Post by Operyl »

mehrdadn wrote: post #371
neilv wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An insightful remark about ReCaptcha on HN recently (I don't have a link) was that it went from being "are you human" to "which human are you".

It sounds funny but I don't get it. ReCaptcha doesn't identify you does it?

To the website? No. To Google? Almost certainly given how it works.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#398

Post by mirimir »

Nition wrote: post #392
mikro2nd wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a third problem: quite a bit of the stuff they present is (almost) uniquely American and presents a recognition challenge in other cultural contexts. That yellow vehicle? Looks nothing like a bus in most other parts of the world. And so the rest of the world gets to learn what an American Bus looks like... Not, I think, what was intended.

Fourth problem: How vague the instructions are. When I'm asked to click the boxes that contain signs, do I include the poles?

Yeah, this one puzzles me too. Generally, it seems like signs and traffic lights don't include supports, poles, etc.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#399

Post by netcraft »

x3sphere wrote: post #216
dessant wrote: post #39

I was going through the same ordeal as a Firefox user, so I've made Buster to solve challenges and reclaim some of that lost time: https://github.com/dessant/buster If you're a developer, please consider replacing reCAPTCHA on your site with an alternative. reCAPTCHA discriminates against people with disabilities and those who seek privacy, and it gaslights you into thinking you did not solve the challenge correctly,…

reCaptcha v3 works well for me. There are no challenges anymore and it just gives you a score based on whether it thinks the user is a bot/spammer, then you can do whatever with that. Personally if the score is low enough I just place the user in a restricted user group that needs approval on certain site actions.

Was just looking into using v3 today. Can you share what you consider to be low enough? I haven't seen any guidance on thresholds

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#400

Post by mirimir »

amenod wrote: post #285
neilv wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An insightful remark about ReCaptcha on HN recently (I don't have a link) was that it went from being "are you human" to "which human are you".

Ha, ha, very accurate observation. And if Google keeps the pressure and nothing hits them back, soon the answer will be "Number 17 of 312 still using Firefox". I still can't believe how Google has changed their tune - from "dont be evil" to being worse than MS ever was, which is quite an achievement in itself.

> I still can't believe how Google has changed their tune - from "dont be evil" to being worse than MS ever was, which is quite an achievement in itself.

It's called "selling out".

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