Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#281

Post by dawnerd » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #200

tomduncalf wrote: post #21

Google Captcha is a complete mess at this point and I often leave websites that use it if it's not essential to what I am doing

Even more annoying are those sites that insist on using it, even though they know I'm human -- for reasons like I've paid them some money or jumped through their KYC hoops. At that point it's just being rude and exploitive, and, personally, I've reached the point where I'll simply take my business elsewhere if a site chooses to treat me with so little basic respect.

Oh you mean like Mongodb Atlas? (Although looks like they've gotten rid of it or toned it down). There were days where I couldn't log in because recaptcha just refused to let me.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#282

Post by __david__ » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

dessant wrote: post #141

judge2020 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with recaptcha alternatives is that they either are insecure or require time and money to continue to be ahead of bots. All of the "interactive stand-alone approaches" from that page can be beaten with run-of-the-mill OCR (other than perhaps the 3d challenge) and with almost any mobile phone speech recognition engine (and, if the attacker has the money, can send it off to Google's cloud speech-to-text). A…

Hobby sites may be in a more difficult position, but businesses may decide between developer convenience and low cost, or excluding some of their users and tormenting them. There are also ways to reduce the damage reCAPTCHA causes, such as keeping it out of the default UX path. Discord for example will show a reCAPTCHA challenge on the login page only if you are signing in from a new location. reCAPTCHA cannot effect…

> …only if you are signing in from a new location.

Or you clean your cookies out, thank you "Cookie Autodelete".

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#283

Post by swebs » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

talonx wrote: post #41

exakoustos wrote: post #10

This is why once I switched to FF I also switched to DuckDuckGo

The captcha has nothing to do with Google the search engine. Google's catpcha is used on a lot of websites which are not connected with Google. On a different note, this also makes it difficult to use such websites if you block google domains in your adblocker for non-Google sites.

They actually block you from search if you're connecting from a VPN and have uMatrix enabled.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#284

Post by about_help » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #231

michaelt wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're just discriminating against Firefox users? At least part of the behaviour shown in the video depends on factors like cookies, IP address, and whether you have features like anti-fingerprinting protection turned on. [1] Recaptcha is frustrating and I dislike it, especially the slow fade-ins and multiple challenges, but if you repeat the test shown in the video you won't find it 100% repeatable just because you…

If it can be statistically proven that this is occurring more on Firefox than Chrome then Google has a really, really big problem. The burden to make sure it isn’t is on them, most especially in the EU. Google is facing a very real future where they will have no web browser and possibly no operating system.

It absolutely is happening more on Firefox. I open Chrome almost exclusively to bypass CAPTCHAS, and I doubt they will get in trouble because Chrome gives more detailed data due to its invasive lack of privacy. You can't really blame Google for using its own tech to provide "better" results, but it is high time we started blaming them for the massive privacy violations they use to make their convenience work.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#285

Post by amenod » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #259

crazygringo wrote: post #170

I've never understood what happened to reCAPTCHA, it was originally so great and is now just so, so toxic. Originally it was an awesome solution based on OCR'ing books that usually worked quickly on the first try, and almost never took more than two. Then it turned into a single checkbox (analyzing mouse movement) so it was even faster... and I remember some simple image-based like "select the images of cats" that we…

An insightful remark about ReCaptcha on HN recently (I don't have a link) was that it went from being "are you human" to "which human are you".

Ha, ha, very accurate observation.

And if Google keeps the pressure and nothing hits them back, soon the answer will be "Number 17 of 312 still using Firefox".

I still can't believe how Google has changed their tune - from "dont be evil" to being worse than MS ever was, which is quite an achievement in itself.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#286

Post by nishmastime » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #79

tomduncalf wrote: post #21

Google Captcha is a complete mess at this point and I often leave websites that use it if it's not essential to what I am doing

I don't log in to Google Captcha sites anymore, unless I absolutely have to. Their discrimination against FF users has been fairly evident over the past year or so. It's amazing how my identification abilities improve exponentially by using Chrome instead of Firefox.

Reading these types of comments on HN, you'd think HN doesn't use Recaptcha for login/register. ;)

Easy to hate on Recaptcha while reaping the rewards of participating in a community that deals with less automated spam because of it. :)

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#287

Post by krispbyte » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #143

Why are we labeling images for free for google?

Not for free. It's a service the owners of the website give to Google in exchange for letting you post. You are the product here.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#288

Post by AYBABTME » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #138

briandear wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending my data to Google as a condition of using someone else’s site also isn’t secure. Training Google AI also isn’t something I signed up for.

Not saying I like the precedent of Google being inescapable, you're not "signing up" for anything. A web server is 100% in its rights to refuse to send you a page, on their terms.

Not sure why you're downvoted, it's a valid point. It feels icky to use a service that you pay for, and incidentally provide free labor to Google's AI which they resell in Google Cloud as a walled garden. The result of reCaptcha isn't public as far as I can tell, and humanity probably doesn't get a net benefit from Google's monopoly on AI anymore.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#289

Post by cameronbrown » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

ghusbands wrote: post #220

cameronbrown wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I like the precedent of Google being inescapable, you're not "signing up" for anything. A web server is 100% in its rights to refuse to send you a page, on their terms.

Not entirely accurate. The GDPR restricts the terms they can use, for example. And anti-discrimination law probably also applies. These don't really apply to captcha, of course, under current interpretations.

It's very easy to argue that CAPTCHA is an essential service and therefore not under GDPR.

> anti-discrimination law

Google-avoiders are not a protected class.

Re: Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

#290

Post by DownGoat » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

capsha wrote: post #252

judge2020 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with recaptcha alternatives is that they either are insecure or require time and money to continue to be ahead of bots. All of the "interactive stand-alone approaches" from that page can be beaten with run-of-the-mill OCR (other than perhaps the 3d challenge) and with almost any mobile phone speech recognition engine (and, if the attacker has the money, can send it off to Google's cloud speech-to-text). A…

Yeah, but then again, so many times that I run into Captcha issues, it's on a site that really doesn't need Captcha to begin with. Why make me solve a Captcha to see static content? Why make me solve a Captcha to log in when I've already completed one to register? Why make me solve a Captcha to pay utility bills? Is there some underground group of deviants going around surreptitiously paying other people's utility bi…

> Why make me solve a Captcha to see static content?

Fair point, I usually run into this when using Tor, or VPN when accessing content behind Cloudflare, and or similar services. This is some anti abuse stuff, but is often overly agressive with giving you captchas.

> Why make me solve a Captcha to log in when I've already completed one to register?

So attackers cannot password spray. This is typically after attackers has gotten access to the latest database breach, and are just blindly trying username/password combinations.

> Why make me solve a Captcha to pay utility bills? Is there some underground group of deviants going around surreptitiously paying other people's utility bills?

Sound like a strange place to have a captcha indeed. What information is needed in the form to submit it? Does it validate stuff that an attacker might want to scrape? I guess they added it for a reason.