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Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

andrewmunsell.com

111–120 of 201 posts

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#111

The problem isn't captchas, but users not understanding how to interact with them. So what if a few are bad? Hammer out best guesses, fast as you can, until you're successful. It's not as if you're graded on accuracy. There is no reason to ever resort to the refresh button, Out of curiosity, I went and opened the demo page ( https://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/ajax ) in a new incognito window and timed myself. I ca…

Sorry, the user is never wrong. This is an interface problem, and the interface is terrible.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#112
post #102
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, in incognito mode Google hasn't built up a profile of you yet so they assume you're a spammer.

If they are using your profile, what is the point of recaptcha then? It's circular reasoning.

1. Block people who don't have a profile that may be spammers

2. Free human OCR

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#113

The problem isn't captchas, but users not understanding how to interact with them. So what if a few are bad? Hammer out best guesses, fast as you can, until you're successful. It's not as if you're graded on accuracy. There is no reason to ever resort to the refresh button, Out of curiosity, I went and opened the demo page ( https://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/ajax ) in a new incognito window and timed myself. I ca…

After I've filled out 20 different forms the last thing I want to do is deal with a completely illegible captcha which might go far as to refresh the entire page or wipe out what I've entered in certain fields (password, ssn, etc) each time I get it wrong. That's one way to push me away from signing up for your service.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#116
post #113

The problem isn't captchas, but users not understanding how to interact with them. So what if a few are bad? Hammer out best guesses, fast as you can, until you're successful. It's not as if you're graded on accuracy. There is no reason to ever resort to the refresh button, Out of curiosity, I went and opened the demo page ( https://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/ajax ) in a new incognito window and timed myself. I ca…

After I've filled out 20 different forms the last thing I want to do is deal with a completely illegible captcha which might go far as to refresh the entire page or wipe out what I've entered in certain fields (password, ssn, etc) each time I get it wrong. That's one way to push me away from signing up for your service.

That's not really a problem with recaptcha so much as the integration with the rest of the site.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#117
post #74

Here's something interesting. If I go to the ReCaptcha demo page in Chrome that is logged in to Google, I get all house numbers, a lot of which seem like easy OCR. If go to the same demo page in Incognito mode, I get the two word version instead, like this blog is complaining about. http://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/

Yes: reCAPTCHA now keeps a profile of you and gives humanoid users easier reCAPTCHAs.

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2013/10/recaptcha-j...

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#118
post #74

Here's something interesting. If I go to the ReCaptcha demo page in Chrome that is logged in to Google, I get all house numbers, a lot of which seem like easy OCR. If go to the same demo page in Incognito mode, I get the two word version instead, like this blog is complaining about. http://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/

I've also seen a lot of house numbers in Firefox.

It is based on the google tracking cookies, not being logged in. I don't have a google account, but I still see the house #s on firefox, until I flush their cookies.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#119
post #58
post #3

The squished-up word is the control word, and the straight one is the unknown one. You only need to get the wavy word right and just guess at all the cut-off examples.

I've solved a lot of captcha's in my time, and really have never experienced the trouble the author is detailing. Not only am I relieved when I see a reCaptcha since they are some of the easiest and most forgiving challenges, but I don't recall ever having repeated bad/unsolvable challenges presented on the same page. Sure, maybe sometimes you get a weird one and fail it. But typically the next challenge is easy to p…

[deleted]

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#120

The problem isn't captchas, but users not understanding how to interact with them. So what if a few are bad? Hammer out best guesses, fast as you can, until you're successful. It's not as if you're graded on accuracy. There is no reason to ever resort to the refresh button, Out of curiosity, I went and opened the demo page ( https://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/ajax ) in a new incognito window and timed myself. I ca…

Eh, I've hit some really frustrating captchas where after five or so attempts I ended up just closing the page (these were reCAPTCHA ones...) The problem was most definitely with the captchas.
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