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Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

andrewmunsell.com

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Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#101

Post by bryondowd »

surreal wrote: post #39
Alupis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ReCaptcha only requires one (1) out of two (2) words to be correct in the challenge. It presents one known-by-the-system-word, and one not-known word. If you get the known word correct (the easier of the two to read) then it passes the challenge. ReCaptcha then pools the answers for the second not-known word and after pooling thousands (or more) responses, then that word becomes "known" based on the average answers (…

Again, sorry, I've got to point you back to the original article. The author explains the details of reCAPTCHA's known/unknown word-pair clearly, as you have done, but goes on to explain that the impossible-to-read word was actually reCAPTCHA's "known word", so the CAPTCHA was impossible to pass.

Yes, but the author actually only tried once. Every other example he gives, he claims he hit refresh to get a new one instead of attempting it. Also, I have to wonder if he was simply mistaken about that first attempt. Are we sure it didn't just fail because his username/password was wrong and display a new captcha, causing him to assume he had failed the first captcha?

I do have to admit most of those are cases where both words are difficult or impossible. But we can at least assume that the easier of the two (the one not cut in half) is the control in most of those.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#102

Post by snarfy »

wmf wrote: post #78
smackfu wrote: 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/

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.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#103

Post by vitd »

Alupis wrote: post #58
sp332 wrote: 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…

>Besides this -- the article makes no attempt to offer a better solution.

That's completely irrelevant. Criticism is not about solving the problem. It's about pointing out that the current solution is inadequate.

Most movie critics never wrote, directed, or acted in movies. It doesn't invalidate their criticism.

In fact, your criticism of the other poster's criticism doesn't offer a better solution than criticism either. You simply criticize that post. (And that's OK, if ironic.)

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#105

Post by brianbreslin »

snarfy wrote: post #102
wmf wrote: 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.

You are free labor

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#106

Post by nobodyshere »

Igglyboo wrote: post #82
smackfu wrote: 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/

Same here, maybe they trust people who are using their services more and want them to OCR some google street view stuff.

Leaving no captcha would be a hint for spammers to provide requests with valid cookies thus simplifying the task. I assume that's the reason for increased difficulty in incognito.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#108

Post by Pinckney »

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 can do about 8/minute at maybe 90% accuracy.

Captchas are only a problem if you compulsively refresh in hopes of getting something clear.

Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous

#110

Post by smackfu »

snarfy wrote: post #102
wmf wrote: 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.

I assume that too many failures puts your profile back into the "hard captcha" pool.
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