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I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

michaels.world

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Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#191

Post by blindgeek »

And the very angry email that I (probably unwisely) just dashed off to support@hcaptcha.com:

"So I've been trying to sign in repeatedly to set the accessibility cookie since last night. Every time I click the submit button, I get the useless error message "an error has occurred, please try again".

My friend, who shares my roof and my static IP, got banned from hcaptcha's accessibility service last year for being too smart to be blind. And I suspect you all have banned our IP and not just his account.

For the record, my static IP address is (redacted).

See https://michaels.world/2023/11/i-was-banned-from-the-hcaptch... for his story. I have been broadcasting this to websites frequented by technically capable people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42171164 https://lobste.rs/s/qbkd0u/i_was_banned_from_hcaptcha_access...

Please let your bosses know that I plan to pursue legal action against hCaptcha and/or amplify the truth to destroy its reputation in the public square. I will also be reaching out to websites who utilize hCaptcha, letting them know that the captcha provider they employ is refusing to provide reasonable accomodations to blind people.

Whether it be with the force of law or the force of satyagraha, your bosses are going to get a message and we will win.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#192

Post by andrewaylett »

CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

These things have one job. Any time they fail to identify a human, they have failed at their job. How they go about administering the test, and (to a large extent) what the human does in response, should be irrelevant. I know that's hard, no-one said the job was easy, and the companies developing them are the ones making claims about their efficacy.

If you want to block 100% of bots, don't put your stuff on the Internet. If you want to block bots and allow humans then you're going to have false negatives. Failing to acknowledge them is dishonest.

None of which stops me filling them out when I encounter them, but I don't have to like it.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#193

Post by blindgeek »

blindgeek wrote: post #191

And the very angry email that I (probably unwisely) just dashed off to support@hcaptcha.com: "So I've been trying to sign in repeatedly to set the accessibility cookie since last night. Every time I click the submit button, I get the useless error message "an error has occurred, please try again". My friend, who shares my roof and my static IP, got banned from hcaptcha's accessibility service last year for being too…

And their thoroughly unhelpful reply:

"Hi there, sorry to hear you're having difficulties!

We have an alternative authentication scheme that you may prefer: https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility

You can sign up here: https://dashboard.hcaptcha.com/signup?type=accessibility

This lets you avoid the challenge altogether after registration.

It is designed for users with any kind of difficulty solving the challenges.

Thanks for reaching out, and hope this makes your experience better."

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#194

Post by Saris »

nmarinov wrote: post #167
RobMurray wrote: post #74

I am also blind. hCaptcha is the worst. Their stupid cookie expires so I have to go through their getting an email to set the cookie almost every time I encounter one. It's a horrendous UX, especially when using different devices and browsers. I imagine others just give up instead of dealing with the crap. They shouldn't use the word accessibility when their whole service is the exact opposite. The bots can probably…

What's the best captcha regarding accessibility?

Brave PoW captcha maybe? Because it requires no input/interaction from the user.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#195

Post by mock-possum »

bityard wrote: post #61
Rastonbury wrote: post #14

Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks

I have lived in the West my whole life, and am reasonably well educated, and have never heard the word conoids in my life.

Sure, but you can imagine pretty easily what a ‘conoid’ would be, right? ‘Sphereoid’ would be something sphere-like, ‘mongoloid’ is something mongol-like, ‘freakazoid’ is something freaky…

it’s pretty clear from context that ‘conoid’ means ‘like a cone’ isn’t it?

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#196

Post by jchw »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #116
jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

> Anonymity of users: validating someone's real-life identity sufficiently would make it possible to permanently ban malicious individuals and filter out bots with good effectiveness, but it will destroy anonymity online. In my opinion, literally untenable. I see this point constantly made on the echo chamber that is known as HackerNews. The average normie user does not care about anonymity, nor privacy, on the Inter…

It's not the average person's job to make sure that the world isn't fucking them raw. People have limited attention and limited time, not everyone can care about everything.

Nobody else is going to step in and hold the line when it comes to digital privacy rights. It's on people like us who care. This is why organizations like EFF need to exist.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#197

Post by jchw »

miki123211 wrote: post #166
jchw wrote: post #41

I hope we can end the CAPTCHA experiment soon. It didn't work. Phone verification isn't good either, but for as much as I hate phone verification at least it actually raises the cost of spamming somewhat. CAPTCHA does not. Almost all turnkey CAPTCHA services can be solved for pennies. Solving the problems of SPAM and malicious traffic will be challenging... I am worried it will come down to three possible things: - A…

> for pennies "for pennies" is a lot more expensive than 0, and that matters at scale. Scam isn't about one person performing one request, for that you can indeed just hire a human, it's about thousands of bots constantly interacting with a service. If you need to scrape 10m records and there's no anti-fraud protection, you pay $0 (excluding typical bandwidth / server costs). If every query requires a captcha, and yo…

Actually, I oversimplified. In most cases you don't have to pay $.01 per CAPTCHA. It's usually a fraction of a penny per CAPTCHA.

So basically it's good enough to protect something that is arguably barely worth protecting. I don't find this compelling. Protecting things that barely need it is already easy using existing techniques.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#198

Post by throw_a_grenade »

If you're in Europe, consider filing GDPR complaint to your local data protection authority. One of the rights recognised in GDPR is right to rectify information about you, and it was clearly not afforded by the provider here.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#199

Post by mathfailure »

hCaptcha is worse, than reCaptcha.

I pass the captcha (I am not blind and not using accessibility account) and get response like

Your response to the CAPTCHA appears to be invalid. Please re-verify that you're not a robot below. (Reference ID: 4035128747213959)

And you are given captcha again (passing which will have the same result).

reCaptcha had similar issue, but choosing 'accessibility' would transform the captcha from visual to auditory one and passing it had no such problems.

In the end I just gave up.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#200

Post by RandallBrown »

yorwba wrote: post #3
blindgeek wrote: post #2

The author was essentially too smart to be blind.

I wonder whether talking about "looking at the javascript console" somehow made them think that this person cannot possibly be blind, since how could a blind person "see" the JavaScript console? (But "having my screen reader read the content of the JavaScript console to me" is a bit of a mouthful.)

I'd bet that's exactly what happened.
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