Why Captchas have gotten so difficult • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#171

Post by trumped » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

outime wrote: post #24

Google reCAPTCHA is the absolute worst. It makes me solve several puzzles very often, usually when I use a mobile network and I’m not logged in with any Google account. It’s so frustrating that most of the times I find a reCAPTCHA I give up before trying and just go elsewhere e.g. when a site uses reCAPTCHA for sign up or after the first failed login, I’ll most likely skip if I don’t absolutely need to access such we…

the word combination "fuck Google" has become very common in my thoughts when I encounter Google's reCAPTCHA... Google is breaking the web in many ways and this is one of them.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#172

Post by PSZD » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

darkpuma wrote: post #135

hombre_fatal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's entirely reasonable to show a challenge after a couple of failed login attempts, but they should never be part of the default login flow. Nope, that only works if there weren't botnets that just multiplex millions of requests over thousands of websites. Anyone who has tried IP-blocking bots has run into this where 50k+ IP addresses just need to send you one request per couple minutes. Your posts in this thread…

reCAPTCHA's tile fade-in doesn't punish bots, it punishes real humans. Your argument might be valid if reCAPTCHA were a true CAPTCHA, rather than compliance/recruiting mechanism used by google to abuse people until they relent and adopt google products. But yeah, it's free so you can't resist using it. Have you ever stopped to wonder why google gives this service out for free? When you integrate reCAPTCHA into your w…

Humans are the problem, not some mythical AI powering the bots. It costs a fraction of a cent to get a CAPTCHA solved. The only real counter being used is making it take longer to solve a CAPTCHA - which is exactly what the services like reCAPTCHA do, while minimizing the impact on heuristically 'good' users.

Making CAPTCHA solves take 30 seconds or a minute instead of 5 seconds is the state of the art.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#173

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

corey_moncure wrote: post #164

computerex wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's using you as human labor to label data. That's why you have to solve multiple. It's annoying but greatly helps accelerate research and development since data is king.

If this is so, how does it know when I've mis-labeled?

By showing the same images to thousands of other people and going with the consensus, I imagine. For any given label, if you pick a photo that few other people picked, it presumably considers that to be "wrong."

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#174

Post by alexdumitru » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #104

dessant wrote: post #103

I've made a browser extension that solves CAPTCHAs using the audio challenge. Native user input simulation will come with the next release. https://github.com/dessant/buster On my part it is a direct reaction to developers and their employers cutting corners and adding these challenges to login forms and anything else you can imagine. It's entirely reasonable to show a challenge after a couple of failed login attempt…

I do use a CAPTCHA, but not on a login form. It's solely for a "contact us" form. We do try to encourage just regular email with a mailto: href, but unfortunately, customers expect a form. And, if I don't use the captcha, we get flooded with spam. We are using Google's "nocaptcha", which is usually unintrusive, but is a pain for anyone not logged into some Google property.

I manage to get rid of line 99.99% of spam with a hidden checkbox. Bots tend to check them, so I just ignore it if it's checked.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#175

Post by salgernon » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

I'd welcome a CashCaptcha that charged me $.05usd to click past a reCaptcha. They happen enough to be annoying, but not often enough to present a financial burden - but if I were a spammer trying to abuse automated access, the actual cost might finally outweigh the return.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#176

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 3:27 AM UTC

outime wrote: post #24

Google reCAPTCHA is the absolute worst. It makes me solve several puzzles very often, usually when I use a mobile network and I’m not logged in with any Google account. It’s so frustrating that most of the times I find a reCAPTCHA I give up before trying and just go elsewhere e.g. when a site uses reCAPTCHA for sign up or after the first failed login, I’ll most likely skip if I don’t absolutely need to access such we…

[deleted]

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#177

Post by vharuck » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

vpmpaul wrote: post #136

I've actually started trying to see how wrong the newer Capchas from will let me be on purpose. Either by not selecting all of them or picking wrong ones. They let you through a lot of the time.

I remember when a forum I browsed introduced the text captcha. Users intentionally typed in the same incorrect expletive for the word not known to captcha. It was easy to tell by the font. The goal was skew the algorithm.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#178

Post by fxfan » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

outime wrote: post #24

Google reCAPTCHA is the absolute worst. It makes me solve several puzzles very often, usually when I use a mobile network and I’m not logged in with any Google account. It’s so frustrating that most of the times I find a reCAPTCHA I give up before trying and just go elsewhere e.g. when a site uses reCAPTCHA for sign up or after the first failed login, I’ll most likely skip if I don’t absolutely need to access such we…

its because google no longer just tests if you are a human- they also train their model- try this- and I've tried it successfully far too many times-

Enter your first captcha wrong and then half the times, on the second one it won't say you did first wrong. (it's because first was a learning set). do the second one right and then you're good.

I deliberately mark the exact opposite of right boxes in the first captcha at times, takes me the same time but at least I can say I delayed skynet.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#179

Post by jplayer01 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

seandougall wrote: post #149

robin_reala wrote: post #110

Every time a CAPTCHA thread comes up I have to point this out. By using one you’re externalising your business costs onto your users. You can make that choice, but if you do you’re far more likely to negatively impact the section of society that already has problems online: those who need to use assistive technologies.

I came here because that last point is getting lost in the discussion. > While a bot will interact with a page without moving a mouse, or by moving a mouse very precisely, human actions have “entropy” that is hard to spoof, Ghosemajumder says. It's bad enough that systems working from this (highly dubious, IMO) premise will force us all to use the mouse even if we're used to the tab and arrow keys; much worse is that…

So, I use Vimium to interact with my browser with solely my keyboard 90% of the time. I wonder how much this in any way correlates with the absolutely infuriating amount of captcha challenges I get one after the other.

Re: Why Captchas have gotten so difficult

#180

Post by Izkata » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

alexdumitru wrote: post #174

tyingq wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do use a CAPTCHA, but not on a login form. It's solely for a "contact us" form. We do try to encourage just regular email with a mailto: href, but unfortunately, customers expect a form. And, if I don't use the captcha, we get flooded with spam. We are using Google's "nocaptcha", which is usually unintrusive, but is a pain for anyone not logged into some Google property.

I manage to get rid of line 99.99% of spam with a hidden checkbox. Bots tend to check them, so I just ignore it if it's checked.

I remember reading about a blog that used this method something like 10 years ago, and wondered why I don't hear about it more often. Glad to know it still works just as well as back then.