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reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

arstechnica.com

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Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#21

Post by tokenizerrr »

toggle wrote: post #19
FiloSottile wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can implement basic defenses like hidden input forms or checkboxes that are masked by CSS rules or served on the client side with JavaScript to weed out bots from human users, among other less intrusive techniques. Umh, anything that will end up in the POST request will be reproduced by a bot, I don't even actually look at the page when implementing screen scraping modules, but just at the Network tab of the Ch…

No no, the hidden input fields would not be filled in by a human (because they're positioned off screen by CSS, for example), whereas a bot would fill them in because the bot is just scraping the HTML for all input fields and filling them in with something. It seems like you had that backwards -- hope that clears it up.

Why would I have my bot fill them in? One glance at the site and I know that my bot should skip those fields.

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#22

Post by tokenizerrr »

promoCode wrote: post #18

...and why, pray tell, are they still providing turing tests to humans, if they already know who the humans are, you ask? Well! Very obviously, any human can behave just as maliciously as a bot might! So captchas are there to slow us down. Point blank. They are flood control. They prevent spam, be it from bot or human. The real question is, why would Ars Technica be so chicken-shit, that they can't come out and say t…

If you want to slow someone down you add in a delay. Like many forum software already does.

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#23

Post by matchu »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #21
toggle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, the hidden input fields would not be filled in by a human (because they're positioned off screen by CSS, for example), whereas a bot would fill them in because the bot is just scraping the HTML for all input fields and filling them in with something. It seems like you had that backwards -- hope that clears it up.

Why would I have my bot fill them in? One glance at the site and I know that my bot should skip those fields.

It's meant as a defense against non-targeted bots—the ones that roam the web looking for forms to fill out.

I think that's where the issue lies: these tools do different things. Honeypot fields defend against general bots. Captchas defend against specific bots, too, but also have greater friction, so are only used when specific bots are an issue.

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#25

Post by malbs »

I thought maybe I was the only one who struggled with recaptcha captchas. On some sites I have literally tried 10-15 times before finally becoming too frustrated and giving up solving the captcha because whatever it was (form to fill out for a download, fill out a comment on a site), just wasn't worth the time I was wasting. Hugely irritating.

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#26

Post by Larrikin »

matchu wrote: post #23
tokenizerrr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I have my bot fill them in? One glance at the site and I know that my bot should skip those fields.

It's meant as a defense against non-targeted bots—the ones that roam the web looking for forms to fill out. I think that's where the issue lies: these tools do different things. Honeypot fields defend against general bots. Captchas defend against specific bots, too, but also have greater friction, so are only used when specific bots are an issue.

I did my mom's website for her small law firm and I was getting tons of bots even with hidden form fields and they didn't look targetted. Captcha helped a lot but the spam didn't stop until I used both combined with special rules, like the phone number field has to have a certain amount of numbers.

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#28

Post by Smegger »

encno1s3 wrote: post #17

Google knows your searches, and I am pretty sure google knows every site you visit, via google analytics, which most sites run. Combine this with browser fingerprinting (your browser's fingerprint is incredibly unique), and the fact that you probably have a google account. There is a high probability they know who you are. From your history they can determine if you're human or not.

They don't know every site I visit, the add-ons request policy, no-script, and ghostery, are enough to filter googles influence except when a site has embedded youtube video or a captcha

Re: reCAPTCHAs are finally readable by normal humans

#30

Post by olalonde »

I wonder if a Javascript based proof-of-work system could be used as an alternative to CAPTCHAs. It wouldn't stop spam entirely but it would rate-limit it and possibly render some forms of spam unprofitable. Aa a bonus, the proof-of-work could be tied to something useful (Folding@home?) just like reCAPTCHA's CAPTCHAs are useful for digitizing books.
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