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Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

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Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#1

Post by JeanMarcS »

So I wanted to book some places for my next holidays on Airbnb and I came on the most annoying CAPTCHA I ever saw

https://i.postimg.cc/sXppmyxm/airbnbdes.png

Now you have to make sum of dices only to acces the website. And 5 times in a row.

And be sure to make no mistake ! I unfortunatly did on the fifth/last one (was getting really p*ssed), and had to start over !

So this morning I had to make around 50 dices sum just to acces this website.

I don't kow who came with this idea, but I find this really bad.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#3

Post by captn3m0 »

It's Arkose Labs (also used by Roblox, GitHub, Dropbox, Twitch, and more). There's some more links here: https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 (Buster is a browser extension for automated captcha solving). You can subscribe here https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/320

Their audio captcha (no longer available?) involved listening to 3 MIDI tunes and picking "the sad one".

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#6

Post by dannyw »

ehnto wrote: post #4

I don't see why if I got my credentials right, I have to prove I am not a robot. What if I wanted a robot to access my account on my behalf?

Because they can't distinguish that from a robot ran by a malicious hacker trying to access other people's accounts using stolen credentials.

Particularly for Airbnb, who deals with travelers (visits from international locations; shared IP ranges like airport wifi and cgNAT, etc).

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#7

Post by sailorganymede »

speedgoose wrote: post #2

Maybe someone should do a solver for this CAPTCHA and put the code on GitHub. It does look really easy to solve using Machine Learning.

If I was a betting man, I’d wager the reason why they give these weirder types of challenges is because solving CAPTCHAs means you’re labelling them, which gives who ever is hosting it labelled data to train their own models against. that’s why CAPTCHAs sometimes ask ppl to spot all the zebra crossings and stuff etc - no machine can solve it yet, so ppl can do it, and by doing it and solving it, you produce a labelled dataset for autonomous cars.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#8

Post by kashnote »

ehnto wrote: post #4

I don't see why if I got my credentials right, I have to prove I am not a robot. What if I wanted a robot to access my account on my behalf?

I assume they’re trying to fight against bots buying up “hot” Airbnbs that sell out quickly. It’s a weird captcha for sure, but understandable why they wouldn’t want bots accessing the site.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#9

Post by dannyw »

kashnote wrote: post #8
ehnto wrote: post #4

I don't see why if I got my credentials right, I have to prove I am not a robot. What if I wanted a robot to access my account on my behalf?

I assume they’re trying to fight against bots buying up “hot” Airbnbs that sell out quickly. It’s a weird captcha for sure, but understandable why they wouldn’t want bots accessing the site.

Does this actually happen??

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#10

Post by jazzyjackson »

kashnote wrote: post #8
ehnto wrote: post #4

I don't see why if I got my credentials right, I have to prove I am not a robot. What if I wanted a robot to access my account on my behalf?

I assume they’re trying to fight against bots buying up “hot” Airbnbs that sell out quickly. It’s a weird captcha for sure, but understandable why they wouldn’t want bots accessing the site.

Wait, what does a robot do once it rents a house?
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