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Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

blog.andrewmunsell.com

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Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#161

Post by slowpoke »

icebraining wrote: post #147
slowpoke wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I would have much less of a problem with this if Google actually told this to everyone. Instead, they silently use you for free labor. That's dishonest. I'm all in for crowdsourcing if you tell me about it and nicely ask me to participate. Not when I am forced to do it.

From the landing page of reCaptcha: "reCAPTCHA IS A FREE ANTI-BOT SERVICE THAT HELPS DIGITIZE BOOKS". The "What is reCAPTCHA" explains the OCR process clearly and has the phrase "Currently, we are helping to digitize old editions of the New York Times and books from Google Books." And if you click on the "HELP" link in a reCAPTCHA, it opens a small page with the instructions and a paragraph explain the OCR and a link…

I'm actually wrong on this one, I see. Might be because I don't even really look at the widget itself anymore, I just type it.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#162

Post by brudgers »

StavrosK wrote: post #157
brudgers wrote: post #155

ReCaptcha is free from Google. I would hazard to guess that it is free because the value of the data Google collects is greater than the cost of providing the service. What I notice is that user convenience and blocking bots don't directly enter into the value Google derives, they are only marketing points - i.e. what matters to Google is that the perception of ReCaptcha is suffiently positive that a stream of releva…

You know they use it to digitize books, yes?

Yes of course (and it is not a charity project, either). The fact that you are linking ReCaptcha to a valuable data stream for Google seems to support the my general claim that Google is deriving value from the data stream.

And perhaps the collection of that data almost exclusively at times when a single identity can be correlated with a single datum ( i.e. account creation and management) is merely coincidence.

But surely you are not suggesting that Google is ignorant of this fortuitous situation and its implications for their online advertising business.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#163

Post by repsilat »

sigkill wrote: post #145
repsilat wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is actually pretty easy to beat - the OCR is easy enough, and you can refresh the page until you get an easy question. Some of them are very simple integer arithmetic exercises. As for the harder questions, Wolfram Alpha is better able to do them than the average human.

I'm not sure about which OCR you're talking about but I've tried ABBYY and because of the fractions ie top and bottom halves the thing craps out. Granted, if you get a single line problem it could easily be solved. Definitely there's the problem of application as well. Since this is a quantum bit service Site, you can expect people to know a minimum of integration. But I don't expect Facebook login to have anything e…

I always seem to strike it lucky with that site. I can remember it coming up twice on HN (once now, once a while ago - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290466), and both times I got a one-line equation. I didn't save the equation I got this time, but it was maybe five terms long and most of the atoms were zeros.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#165

Post by majmun »

streptomycin wrote: post #28

It's easy to criticize captchas. That's why there are so many articles like this, which we all knowingly nod along to as we read. It's much harder to provide productive criticism that leads to an actual improvement over the status quo. (Although it is easy to suggest bad alternatives to captchas, which is why they appear in every comment thread about captchas on Hacker News, including this one.)

timeouts of few seconds are decent alternative to captcha. they can't be beaten.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#166

Post by hobin »

Jach wrote: post #124
obilgic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Account gets locked just for that computer.

Oh, you mean just for that IP? Torify. Cookies? Bots don't need to accept them. Do you have something better?

Would it work to do that by IP, and allow only X different IPs for an account to try to login on a single day? e.g. if you've tried to login with 10 different IPs on that day, you will no longer be able to login that day. (Of course this would mean saving some extra data.) The biggest problem I see is that this means people can lock you out of your account, which is probably unacceptable.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#167

Post by StavrosK »

brudgers wrote: post #162
StavrosK wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know they use it to digitize books, yes?

Yes of course (and it is not a charity project, either). The fact that you are linking ReCaptcha to a valuable data stream for Google seems to support the my general claim that Google is deriving value from the data stream. And perhaps the collection of that data almost exclusively at times when a single identity can be correlated with a single datum ( i.e. account creation and management) is merely coincidence. But…

No, I'm not. From the wording of your question I thought you didn't know they digitized books, which is a revenue stream already. They might use it for other data indeed.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#168

Post by dennisgorelik »

chubot wrote: post #117
derefr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about just "You've typed your password wrong N times; you must now wait 2^N seconds before trying again"?

Well, how do you prevent someone from locking you out of your account?

You don't.

If account is locked - user can either wait, or request account recovery (get email).

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#169

Post by tshadwell »

Though I agree those would be hard captchas if you tried to complete them properly, It's not overly hard to guess which one is the control- the control is always bold, very likely a nonsense word, and never cut off or partially visible, because the control is generated by an algorithm rather than a scanner. The captcha isn't really designed to be regenerated until both words make sense.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#170

Post by dalke »

Shenglong wrote: post #103

I have no expertise in this area, but how about patterns? Since we're already parsing so much text, why not take strings of legible text (with a minor visual distortion), and strip a connecting word such as a preposition? The user is then prompted to enter the connecting word. Synonyms could be matched. For example: "I can't stand all ____ your lies" (of) or: "This is all too ____ for me to handle!" (much) Sure, some…

This is all too complex for me to handle! (And "strange", and "weird", and "crazy" and ...)
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