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Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

privatecaptcha.com

201–210 of 394 posts

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#201

Given all the negative comments here - what is anyone's alternate solution for AI-driven fraudulent activity? CAPTCHAs are increasingly ineffective. Services are either going to go offline or implement some kind of system like this. PII like credit cards or SSNs aren't enough because those are regularly stolen. So where do things go? Fewer services and infinite fraud?

CAPTCHA is sort of a flawed concept in the first place. a machine to test if another agent is a machine. But I figure the future of this is give the test, but discard the answer, the truth is in how it is answered, behavioral analyses, see if their access patterns are human or machine like. A simple version of which is how fast they type, or speed items are clicked. A surveillance process that really creeps me out. I am undecided if it creeps me out more or less than fully automated agents spewing shit over the open web.

As a footnote i found googles recaptcha bitterly ironic, it was painted it in bright colors "this data assists in book scanning" or "this help our self driving cars recognize stop signs" but really designed to train models to do exactly what it's trying to prevent them from doing. and making life hell for the humans along the way. The modern single click version is doing behavioral analyses.

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#202
post #24

Whether it's AMP or manifest 3 or android source shenanigan or attempts to replace cookies with their FLOC nonsense or this...Google is rapidly turning into a malicious force when it comes to the open internet

what alternative to WEI do you propose? it solves a bajillion Internet-existential problems. it is definitely a crisis. the bot problem is at least as serious as facebook, gmail serving without https. the fact that this kind of comment gets downvoted proves my point. so what if you personally don't like WEI? it doesn't mean the problems aren't real... that aside, i don't know how people say stuff like "malicious forc…

Bombing every AI data center on Earth would also solve the Internet-existential problems we're facing. But that solution is beyond the pale of course, instead it's incumbent on me to prove to you that panopticon surveillance of every living human being from now until the Sun consumes us is not a reasonable solution to "bots use the Internet".

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cracks me up when people say Chrome is a monopoly, because a massive amount of computing devices do not even ship with Chrome. Windows computers, Macbooks, and iPhones require users go search out and install Chrome on their own out of their own volition, shipping with entirely functional and decent browsers out of the box that they have lots of patterns to push. Even many Android phones ship with browsers other th…

Why do you keep talking about who installs the app? That has nothing to do with whether something is a monopoly, which is primarily about market share.

If a user is openly going out of their way to go and install a competitor's product despite a perfectly serviceable version coming by default, how can the the one being sought out be seen as a monopoly? The competition came pre-installed!

How did the user manage to install Chrome on Windows if Chrome is a monopoly, the only serviceable browser around? They copy the source code from a magazine or something? Get a floppy disk in the mail?

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saw this coming from miles away. Computers are better at solving CAPTCHAs than people are good point... it's interesting how Captcha was initially popularized as a reverse Turing test, but it's just variants of Proof of Work today. And it seemed clever at the time for Google to leverage this for improvement of their OCR models (it was!), and makes you wonder what utility is derived from the proven "work" today.

CAPTCHAs were designed as a type of Turing Test, not a reverse Turing Test. It’s not surprising that the effectiveness of these weaker variants has collapsed, given that AI can now pass the real Turing Test.

I'm not sure if LLMs are solving most of these captchas. There are services that employ humans to solve them for pennies per captcha.

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't worry! I'm from the government and I'm here to ~~help~~ identify you to everyone else on the planet." That's no better, and in many ways far worse, than the corpos doing it.

Do you think identifies never need to be verified? Seems like a central function in operating an accountable society, hence birth certificates, passports, etc. There should not be a requirement to verify identity, but if a website owner only wants to provide access to their website to people with verified identities, why is that not their right?

> Do you think identifies never need to be verified? Seems like a central function in operating an accountable society, hence birth certificates, passports, etc.

Verifying identity for specific services tied to your finances or body is a whole different topic.

> if a website owner only wants to provide access to their website to people with verified identities, why is that not their right?

I like the GDPR's general point of view that the right to privacy is more important than the right to trade privacy for access. An anonymous verification might be fine, but this system is not, and random websites needing your specific identity is not.

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saw this coming from miles away. Computers are better at solving CAPTCHAs than people are good point... it's interesting how Captcha was initially popularized as a reverse Turing test, but it's just variants of Proof of Work today. And it seemed clever at the time for Google to leverage this for improvement of their OCR models (it was!), and makes you wonder what utility is derived from the proven "work" today.

CAPTCHAs were designed as a type of Turing Test, not a reverse Turing Test. It’s not surprising that the effectiveness of these weaker variants has collapsed, given that AI can now pass the real Turing Test.

Oh, right, "reverse" was wrong here. I thought of "computer classifies user as computer or human" versus the inverse, while the word is about who classifies, not who's being classified.

(?)

I guess so

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#207
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has device attestation deployed like one year before Google even proposed it: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-att...

hacker news when discovering that apple deployed WEI, for ages, with beloved IT company Cloudflare, affecting hundreds of millions of users: "aww, you're sweet" hacker news when reading that google is doing the same thing for the rest of the userbase: "hello, human resources?"

Really. I think HN hates Cloudflare with (quite unjustified if you ask me) searing passion.

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you keep talking about who installs the app? That has nothing to do with whether something is a monopoly, which is primarily about market share.

If a user is openly going out of their way to go and install a competitor's product despite a perfectly serviceable version coming by default, how can the the one being sought out be seen as a monopoly? The competition came pre-installed! How did the user manage to install Chrome on Windows if Chrome is a monopoly, the only serviceable browser around? They copy the source code from a magazine or something? Get a flop…

Whatever your definition of monopoly is, it's wrong. The threshold is not 100% market share. If that was the threshold no monopoly has ever existed.

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#209

Why should I even care anymore? I no longer need to access random websites to find information since I can just ask the AIs.

Where do you think the AI gets this information? They also need to browse the web, and are more likely to be blocked by these measures than humans

> are more likely to be blocked by these measures than humans

In other words these measures work as intended...?

Re: Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what does it mean that "Chromium is a monopoly" As someone else said earlier, it is a monopoly by extending the internet in ways that force users into using their browser engine. Due to market share and Google's prevalence, they have the sway to introduce things that cannot meaningfully be avoided without extreme siloing. > What are the other majorly missing features Chrome pushes that other browsers don't have tha…

> by extending the internet in ways that force users into using their browser engine And yet after multiple times of me asking you've yet to give me a single real feature lost. > This is a different question Its literally the thing we're saying is the problem, how is it a different question entirely?! You're saying the problem is they're adding features that force Chromium, but asking about which features you're talk…

It's not so much forcing people to Chrome/chromium for specific features, but trying to increase market share through more subtle means, like paying to have their search engine featured, advertising their products everywhere possible (including inside other people's apps), slowing down their sites (like youtube) on other browsers, or tying in other services (along with way too much personal info) to try to keep people within their sphere of influence.

Is Linux also a monopoly? In a way sure, but I think a big difference is they're not "doing evil" as people claim Google is, and all the development/decisions are still made out in the open in a democratic way.

Former Google execs have even compared their setup to "running the New York Stock Exchange while trading on it."

At least Linux isn't trying to tell people what to do with their software.

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