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Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

221–230 of 442 posts

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Google is attempting to define and thus strongly normalise what is human behaviour is definitely a big red flag to me. ...But this is their core search competency and exactly what makes their search so powerful. Page rank is basically distributed wisdom of crowds, aka algorithm of how people behave (build their websites) based on a search term/imbedded link. This seems like a perfect extension of this.…

Their search is only "powerful" for finding the more mundane and widely disseminated information; I've noticed that it's increasingly difficult to find very specific information with it as it basically misunderstands the query and returns completely useless results. Maybe that's why I look like a bot, as I try to tell it exactly what I want...

Well this is exactly the point. Obscure information has a very low social/viral index and as a result a lot of people don't interact with it so it is hard to find with Google - which is why I don't think it is a particularly robust search engine on it's own in the grand scale of knowledge development.

Google seems robust because humans generally think pretty similarly, and generally look for the things that the people around them are talking about or also looking for. That breaks down considerably though across cultures and time.

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#222
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't us bots be able to search or participate in forums?

As long as you abide by all the social norms including moving that damn mouse the right way, I have have no problems with you, dear bot.

We'll legislate inefficiency. If you cant be as slow as a human, then you will be restricted.

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human. Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot. But if while using their free…

No one should complain about anything, ever.

Actually it would be great is someone has some ideas for ways to identify humans that don't require stuff like javascript. From the perspective of a service provider (and I'm one) the bots are a scourge, they consume resources and they are clearly attempting to 'mine' the search engine for something, but they are unwilling to come forward and just ask the search provider if they would sell it to them. And since they are unwilling to pay, but willing to invest resources in appearing more human like, it leaves service providers in a pretty crappy position.

So anyone have some CSS or otherwise innocuous ways of identifying humans I'm all for it.

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#226

"If we can collect behavioural data from you, and it matches closely the behaviour of other humans, you are a human. Otherwise you're not a human." Does anyone else get that feeling from the description of what Google is doing? I've tripped their "we think you are a bot" detection filter and been presented with a captcha countless times while using complex search queries and searching for relatively obscure things, a…

I've also tripped Google's bot filters. Frankly, I'm more offended that Google is discriminating against robots, seeing as they are one of the leading companies in automation and AI :-)

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#227

"If we can collect behavioural data from you, and it matches closely the behaviour of other humans, you are a human. Otherwise you're not a human." Does anyone else get that feeling from the description of what Google is doing? I've tripped their "we think you are a bot" detection filter and been presented with a captcha countless times while using complex search queries and searching for relatively obscure things, a…

> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human. Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot. But if while using their free…

Saying "just don't use Google/Bing/search engines" is like saying "don't use the airlines".

The security checks suck big time, but really, these services are must-have and there is no better alternative.

Complaining and hoping for some change is all that's left.

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Google is attempting to define and thus strongly normalise what is human behaviour is definitely a big red flag to me. ...But this is their core search competency and exactly what makes their search so powerful. Page rank is basically distributed wisdom of crowds, aka algorithm of how people behave (build their websites) based on a search term/imbedded link. This seems like a perfect extension of this.…

Their search is only "powerful" for finding the more mundane and widely disseminated information; I've noticed that it's increasingly difficult to find very specific information with it as it basically misunderstands the query and returns completely useless results. Maybe that's why I look like a bot, as I try to tell it exactly what I want...

Their search IS powerful, even for obscure things. But when you disable JS and cookies, as you have done, you are taking a huge amount of that power away from the system. Of course you are going to get bad results for anything which is specific to you -- you have disabled their ability to make a better judgement!

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#229
post #35

How long before you will have to answer a series of annoying and difficult questions if you don't allow tracking cookies and google to collect personal information (which I assume the far majority of users allow on a regular basis)? Not sure how I feel about this.

If they create services that you want to use so badly, they can charge you whatever they want for them. If you don't want to pay, I'm sure Bing will be happy to have you.

Re: Are You a Robot? Introducing “No CAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA”

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it in the wired.com article about this also submitted to HN: "And [Vinay] Shet says even the tiny movements a user’s mouse makes as it hovers and approaches a checkbox can help reveal an automated bot."

I guess it's a lot more complicated than it looks at a cursory glance.

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