Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous • Hacker News Board

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#11

Post by andrewmunsell » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:00 AM UTC

snprbob86 wrote: post #9

And they are becoming less and less effective. Since they are so ubiquitous, users don't think twice about completing them. Therefore, infected users are going around unwittingly solving captchas served to them by their associated bot nets.

Wow, I've never heard of that happening before. That would definitely be an issue... Unfortunately I'm not sure how we would end up solving that issue-- there's always going to be the users that don't realize they are being exploited, to solve captchas or otherwise.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#12

Post by rhizome » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:00 AM UTC

pizza wrote: post #4

Is there a way to report CAPTCHAs for illegibility?

There's a recycle button that will generate a new one.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#13

Post by lazugod » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:01 AM UTC

pizza wrote: post #4

Is there a way to report CAPTCHAs for illegibility?

Isn't that implied by refreshing?

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#14

Post by andrewmunsell » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:01 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #12

pizza wrote: post #4

Is there a way to report CAPTCHAs for illegibility?

There's a recycle button that will generate a new one.

I guess the issue is, does Google know when someone recycles a captcha, and if they do, are they doing anything about it? It's useless if the captcha isn't flagged and is just given to another use.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#15

Post by darkstalker » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:08 AM UTC

I've got several times math symbols written in captchas instead of words.. how I'm supposed to write them?

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#16

Post by cjdentra » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:18 AM UTC

Simply put, we need a better way. Some of these are just unintelligible and require multiple attempts. Someone please come up with a model that makes sense!

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#17

Post by jvrossb » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:18 AM UTC

I had just noticed that captchas were getting worse. I always thought sites should just make the user perform an operation. Display a hard to read but still legible "type the second letter of the third word". 'e' would be the correct response. There's got to be a reason this isn't done already, does someone know why?

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#18

Post by learc83 » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:21 AM UTC

I just thought it was me. There's hardly ever a captcha now, that I can get on the first try. I loathe captchas.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#19

Post by ceejayoz » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:23 AM UTC

andrewmunsell wrote: post #14

rhizome wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a recycle button that will generate a new one.

I guess the issue is, does Google know when someone recycles a captcha, and if they do, are they doing anything about it? It's useless if the captcha isn't flagged and is just given to another use.

This is Google, so I'd imagine they keep tallies.

Re: Captchas Are Becoming Ridiculous

#20

Post by ChuckMcM » Sun, Jul 29, 2012, 2:23 AM UTC

andrewmunsell wrote: post #10

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Google just talked about their code which identified kittens in Youtube videos. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/technology/in-a-big-networ... )

That's actually pretty interesting. With time the number of computers/processors required to do these tasks will go down, but for now and based on that experiment, it almost seems more efficient to use picture based captchas.

I don't think you 'get it' Andrew :-) The folks who bust captchas, 16,000 machines is chump change, they run botnets of hundreds of thousands of machines, they dynamically buy EC2 instances, they make a lot of money.

That is the primary reason why I believe that people who use the term 'computationally unfeasible' (you see that a lot in crypto papers) never counted on the kinds of growth we've seen in computers coupled with the ease with which these folks can steal computer power from clueless users.

My claim is that you need an independent engine of computation on your side that can prove you are you with a high degree of confidence, and cannot be corrupted economically by a third party. (so local programs on your PC or Smart phone won't cut it)