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Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

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Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#61

Post by kemiller2002 »

ulfw wrote: post #57
superasn wrote: post #24

There are a lot of sites that are totally unusable on Firefox regardless how much you use ff. I do all my mobile browsing on FF yet when I try to use some websites I always get this Recaptcha failed error(1) while it works flawlessly on chrome though I never use it often. Try it, maybe it will happen for you too. Same happens on most sites which show you that "checking your browser" page via cloudflare too. The web i…

It's even worse when you're running a VPN (especially one of the major public ones). When I see reCAPTCHA I basically give up as sometimes I have to go through 6 or 7 full sets to be let into a site. It's the evil of the internet this.

Thanks for verifying that for me. I thought it was just me being horrible at figuring out what they want.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#62

Post by nkkollaw »

Google is trying to kill the competition by purposely introducing weird bugs here and there, taking advantage of the fact that they own the most visited sites on the web.

They've been doing it for a while now, Tech Altar even had a video about it the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig

Along with the censorship and privacy issues, I guess it's time for them to change their payoff, "don't be evil".

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#63

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

jcomis wrote: post #47

I hate the v3 reCAPTCHA. On FF, I usually KNOW I am answering correctly and it says I failed. I always have to go through it multiple times. It's maddening. It often leaves me second guessing myself... is that sliver of car counted? is a crossing signal a street light? What about those streetlights way off in the distance, do I select those two in addition to the ones front and center? That RV looks sort of like a bu…

They want all tiles with bicycles... but are showing me a road painted bicycle crossing pictogram...

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#64

Post by gok »

jcomis wrote: post #47

I hate the v3 reCAPTCHA. On FF, I usually KNOW I am answering correctly and it says I failed. I always have to go through it multiple times. It's maddening. It often leaves me second guessing myself... is that sliver of car counted? is a crossing signal a street light? What about those streetlights way off in the distance, do I select those two in addition to the ones front and center? That RV looks sort of like a bu…

It's not really about getting the questions right. The challenges they present aren't that hard for modern computer vision systems. It's more about verifying that you consider the question for a "human" amount of time, make your mouse move like a human might, etc.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#65

Post by JorgeGT »

LinuxBender wrote: post #58

So this is probably a bit off topic, but why don't more site owners just create their own unique anti-spam system? In my opinion, if they were simpler, yet all unique, there would be less bots that could mass spam and privacy would be improved. Even something as simple as a question: "How many legs does a spider have?" ____ And then cycle through different types of free form questions of things that most people shoul…

I remember a site that had such questions, specific to the knowledge of the site in question. Imagine HN asking "The L in SQL stands for: _____"

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#66

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

nkkollaw wrote: post #62

Google is trying to kill the competition by purposely introducing weird bugs here and there, taking advantage of the fact that they own the most visited sites on the web. They've been doing it for a while now, Tech Altar even had a video about it the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig Along with the censorship and privacy issues, I guess it's time for them to change their payoff, "don't be evil".

>I guess it's time for them to change their payoff, "don't be evil".

They dropped that years ago, literally and effectively.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#67

Post by llao »

cbsks wrote: post #5

You can view your reCaptcha V3 score here: https://recaptcha-demo.appspot.com/recaptcha-v3-request-scor... I get .7 on my iPhone, I’m guessing that my liberal use of Firefox containers and the cookie auto-delete extension on my desktop will give me a much lower score and cause me to have to jump through extra hoops at websites that implement it, just like the reCaptcha V2 does. Edit: I also got 0.7 on Firefox with st…

> NOTE:This is a sample implementation, the score returned here is not a reflection on your Google account or type of traffic.

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#68

Post by octosphere »

appleiigs wrote: post #54
octosphere wrote: post #11

Google's captcha system is overkill for most websites. If I want to filter out bad actors (on a simple straight-forward site), there are other more simpler and easier to solve captcha systems out there. They might not have the rigour of Google's system, but they do the job, and well. I would however use Google's system if the site is massive and there is the possibility that someone is using a script or some program…

I disagree. Adding Google's captcha is a 15 minute exercise. If i remember correctly, you copy/paste a snippet then add a callback in your own code. Whereas rolling your own captcha implementation would take much longer and be worse.

And it is this very convenience that has countless sites using it. As I said, there are other systems which are just as easy to implement as Google's and which are not overkill and also more privacy friendly (Google's CAPTCHA is known to fingerprint the user using heuristics like mouse movements, screen resolution, etc).

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#69

Post by dheera »

I guess another question is why we really need captchas. What are we trying to protect against that can't be accomplished with rate limits, voting systems, or other ways to regulate meaningful use of a website?

Ultimately why does it matter if the user is a human or bot, as long as they are being a valuable user? What's wrong if a bot buys some of your inventory, pays for it and everything? What's wrong if an NLP bot responds to discussion threads with scientific facts and citations?

Re: Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side

#70

Post by nkkollaw »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #66
nkkollaw wrote: post #62

Google is trying to kill the competition by purposely introducing weird bugs here and there, taking advantage of the fact that they own the most visited sites on the web. They've been doing it for a while now, Tech Altar even had a video about it the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig Along with the censorship and privacy issues, I guess it's time for them to change their payoff, "don't be evil".

>I guess it's time for them to change their payoff, "don't be evil". They dropped that years ago, literally and effectively.

Ah, really—wasn't aware, thanks.
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