Alternatives exists, but the usage is low.
A simple solution is google Authenticator (or similar systems).
The only problem is a system for all kind of users and equipment.
Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
171–180 of 201 posts
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#172[shameless blog post promo ahead]
One simple way for minimizing junk going through automated submits. Idea without using recaptcha at all: http://ademsha.com/notes/simple-proposal-to-stop-spam-going-...
It works only with JS enabled and uses randomization in order to stop bots learning how to avoid it.
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#173hmm, I have to say I haven't had a recaptcha that bad yet, but I have had some bad ones....
But uh... on the first bad recaptcha when trying to guess their password they thought - this recaptcha is ridiculous I will try to solve it of course but just right now I am also going to screenshot it because this is naturally the first thing I think to do!
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was one thing when they were digitizing books. I refuse to help them improve Google Maps. I have never correctly entered in a map number. As long as you're only off by one digit they are accepting
> I refuse to help them improve Google Maps. I have never correctly entered in a map number. So why don't you stop using Google products if you hate it so much?
Let's hope this gains some traction
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
^ This is the way to go. Don't waste any energy on the "unknown" word, just fill out the one that has been smeared out and fill in bogus for the rest. If you want to post on 4chan and don't have a Pass, you need to solve a captcha for every single post. It becomes easier with practice, I fail maybe 1 in 10 captchas. And the more captchas you solve correctly, the easier the captchas for your IP get.
If enough people colluded to use the same unknown word, say "foobar", then couldn't they train recaptcha to believe that is the true value of the word? If I understand recaptcha correctly, and assuming they don't detect collusion well, then eventually the known word pool would get poisoned with a surplus of foobars.
This has happened in google image labeler. Now offline, it was a game where two random people were matched and needed to find new tags for the same image - the scoring was cooperative so points were given when you both chose the same word in the same game. /b/ of course quickly organised the jesusporn metagame... Label the first image as jesus, second as porn, third with jesus, etc. This resulted highest scores for some time.
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#176This is where Facebook comes in handy! Please add your captchas there: https://www.facebook.com/IHateCaptchas?fref=ts
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#177Dear website owners, please, do not use reCaptcha. As was noted in other comments, Google discriminates against the users who try to protect their privacy by showing them nearly unsolvable variant. For instance, I see the hard version all the time since I started to use Privacy Badger for Firefox. It is also not impossible that they discriminate by user-agent.
And generally it is a very bad idea to choose the most popular service among the alternatives, as by doing so you are contributing to the centralization and monopolization of the Internet.
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
In the past month the reCAPTCHA challenges I have encountered have been like the article. I just have to hit reload until I can get something remotely readable or I managed to guess the letters correctly.
That's been my experience too, I thought I was just getting old.
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 eit…
Absolutely. I hate with a passion the attitude of "Don't bring me problems. Bring me solutions". Sure, if you've got a solution as well, that's great. But I'd much rather know there's a problem that you don't have a solution to than be completely ignorant of it.
I go even a bit further: don't bring me solutions, just tell me what makes your life difficult.
As a tools developer, I observe that user-provided solutions almost never address anything outside their specific problem, which is potentially only one of many things the feature with the issue is designed to address.
Some of my colleagues tend to point to user feedback as gospel, including the ways suggested to "fix" the issue. But those fixes are often myopic and laden with technical debt.
But I will never disbelieve a claim that something is confusing, or hard to use (almost never, anyway; some people are idiots). Just don't be offended if I don't fix it in the way you came up with.
Re: Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous
#180Dear website owners, please, do not use reCaptcha. As was noted in other comments, Google discriminates against the users who try to protect their privacy by showing them nearly unsolvable variant. For instance, I see the hard version all the time since I started to use Privacy Badger for Firefox. It is also not impossible that they discriminate by user-agent. And generally it is a very bad idea to choose the most po…
It's almost like, if they already know you're not a bot, they don't have to try very hard to re-prove it, or something.
Think of it in a Bayesian sense.
If 10% of anonymous users end up being bots (the prior), and the "hard" recaptcha has a 1% false-negative (incorrectly identifying someone as a human) rate, then of the anonymous users who succeed in getting past the recaptcha, .1% will be bots (the posterior).
But if 1% of sign-in users are bots (probably less than that), you only need a recaptcha with a 10% false-negative rate to achieve the same bot throughput limit. And, those users are less frustrated.