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Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

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Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#41

Post by moconnor »

Section 6.3 pulls no punches:

"The conclusion can be extended that the true purpose of reCAPTCHAv2 is a free image-labeling labor and tracking cookie farm for advertising and data profit masquerading as a security service."

Neither does the summary:

"We estimate that – during over 13 years of its deployment – 819 million hours of human time has been spent on reCAPTCHA, which corresponds to at least $6.1 billion USD in wages."

"Google has potentially profited $888 billion USD from cookies and $8.75-32.3 billion USD per each sale of their total labeled data set."

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#42

Post by deathanatos »

> Figure 3: Image Bounding Box Task

> Select all squares with motorcycles

I have never once considered this a "bounding box" task (the prompt of "Select all squares with X" certainly doesn't imply it do be), and now I'm wondering if this is the cause of false failures, or if the researchers failed to understand the task. There's a citation on the "Image Bounding Box Task" … but it doesn't lead anywhere useful.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#43

Post by throwawayffffas »

deathanatos wrote: post #42

> Figure 3: Image Bounding Box Task > Select all squares with motorcycles I have never once considered this a "bounding box" task (the prompt of "Select all squares with X" certainly doesn't imply it do be), and now I'm wondering if this is the cause of false failures, or if the researchers failed to understand the task. There's a citation on the "Image Bounding Box Task" … but it doesn't lead anywhere useful.

The bounding box has already been applied. What you are doing is confirming the labels for the bounded boxes.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#44

Post by throwawayffffas »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #22

Given that Recaptcha v3 is using totally different way of determining who is a bot, this seems sort of like legacy analysis.

From google docs:

> reCAPTCHA v3 will never interrupt your users, so you can run it whenever you like without affecting conversion. reCAPTCHA works best when it has the most context about interactions with your site, which comes from seeing both legitimate and abusive behavior. For this reason, we recommend including reCAPTCHA verification on forms or actions as well as in the background of pages for analytics.

This reads exactly like reCaptcha v2 without the fallback. It looks like google is done with labeling data for image recognition.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#45

Post by deathanatos »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #43
deathanatos wrote: post #42

> Figure 3: Image Bounding Box Task > Select all squares with motorcycles I have never once considered this a "bounding box" task (the prompt of "Select all squares with X" certainly doesn't imply it do be), and now I'm wondering if this is the cause of false failures, or if the researchers failed to understand the task. There's a citation on the "Image Bounding Box Task" … but it doesn't lead anywhere useful.

The bounding box has already been applied. What you are doing is confirming the labels for the bounded boxes.

Again, [citation needed]? What makes you think it's a bounding box to begin with?

Even the example image in TFA's answer isn't a bounding box, assuming you select

  .XX.
  ..X.
  ..X.
  ....
(But I've been served images with more "interesting" configurations, such as discontinuities.)

(Not to mention that the paper, Wikipedia, & the common understanding of reCAPTCHA disagrees with your interpretation. Some images presented are going to be labeling tasks and thus inherently cannot be verification. But perhaps my particular failures can be assumed, somehow, to always be verification tasks and the point stands.)

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#46

Post by dizhn »

buro9 wrote: post #11

I abandon 1 in 10 captchas recently. They're becoming so abstract and confusing, few are on sites that I critically need to persevere with. Of the ones I do, I need to regenerate about a third as I'm slightly colour blind, but apparently enough to not see whatever they need me to see. Mostly I won't sign up to a service that has a captcha unless I know in advance it's a service I need (unlikely), it's an immediate cl…

Oh yeah the viaduct vs bridge thing is infuriating. Also what exactly constitutes a traffic light? Do you include the pole? Is the square with a tiny bit of the light included? This could be a philosophical discussion.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#47

Post by digging »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #25
buro9 wrote: post #11

I abandon 1 in 10 captchas recently. They're becoming so abstract and confusing, few are on sites that I critically need to persevere with. Of the ones I do, I need to regenerate about a third as I'm slightly colour blind, but apparently enough to not see whatever they need me to see. Mostly I won't sign up to a service that has a captcha unless I know in advance it's a service I need (unlikely), it's an immediate cl…

Yeah, because while Google deprecates and throws out everything that is considered useful, it never throws out stuff that is old, cumbersome to use and just plain outdated, like their recaptcha madness. It's all about annoying people, and they love that. Just like their search results, those are also annoying and borderline useless.

It's not about annoying you, that's just acceptable collateral.

It's about stealing from you.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#48

Post by hinkley »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #6

To play devil's advocate; it is better to have some kind of fallback when the automated, non-interactive verification does fail. Anecdotally from many posters here and as I've personally experienced, automated verification (as attempted by some captchas which entirely eliminate any user interaction) is not foolproof, and an escape hatch is necessary from time to time. While it could be argued that this leaves the cap…

I’ve been thinking a better solution might be to architect solutions so that you can roll back changes from any user account (in toto would be easiest, but by time range might also be good for compromised accounts) and like shadow banning, you let the machine in and you flag their account as, “I don’t think this is a human”

One you’re pretty sure that the person is real they can do more and more permanent things in your system.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#49

Post by hinkley »

buro9 wrote: post #11

I abandon 1 in 10 captchas recently. They're becoming so abstract and confusing, few are on sites that I critically need to persevere with. Of the ones I do, I need to regenerate about a third as I'm slightly colour blind, but apparently enough to not see whatever they need me to see. Mostly I won't sign up to a service that has a captcha unless I know in advance it's a service I need (unlikely), it's an immediate cl…

Accidental public service telling you to go outside and touch a tree.

Re: Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)

#50

Post by hinkley »

voytec wrote: post #30
buro9 wrote: post #11

I abandon 1 in 10 captchas recently. They're becoming so abstract and confusing, few are on sites that I critically need to persevere with. Of the ones I do, I need to regenerate about a third as I'm slightly colour blind, but apparently enough to not see whatever they need me to see. Mostly I won't sign up to a service that has a captcha unless I know in advance it's a service I need (unlikely), it's an immediate cl…

Sony protects itself from customers seeking warranty repairs with 5 tests in a row, some of which are unsolvable[0]. You then get "this wasn't quite right" notification after 5 tests, on logged-in account with valid credit card assigned and billed by Sony, when even one of these captcha tests was broken. After I did my best to solve 25 tests, I learned that non-warranty support form is equally customer-hostile. When…

Did you do that thing where you talk just a tiny bit louder than necessary so the other customers can hear you, but not so loud you sound like Karen?

Also you should report them to consumer protection watchdogs.

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