Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's Captcha in Firefox vs. in Chrome

grumpy.website

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 503 posts

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

#331

Post by Spivak »

lordgrenville wrote: post #279
dessant wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OK, Discord specifically is terrible. I login in incognito mode from the same location/browser every time, and have to deal with Captcha most of the time.

I mean do you want Discord to fingerprint your browser so you don't have to deal with captchas? Kind of defeats the purpose of incognito doesn't it?

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

#332

Post by gwoplock »

DownGoat wrote: post #290
capsha wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> > 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.

Ive seen captchas on payment forms to prevent credit card checking. You can take a dump of CC details and try them all out on a site and get back the valid ones. I'd assume they charge $1 to the CC to test it before allowing you to continue and then you could cancel your order before they charge the full amount. However, assuming you have to be logged in to pay your bill that seems less reasonable.

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

#333

Post by kccqzy »

burtonator wrote: post #244
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…

They also changed it so that if you've seemed human in the past, they're able to determine if you're probabilistically a human now. This data is a few years old but I imagine it's the same based on my experience. They're using your cookie + IP + your account data to determine if you're probably a human. A LOT of reCAPTCHA sites never prompt you. You only know if it's there because you're on Tor or something.

> A LOT of reCAPTCHA sites never prompt you.

That has only happened to me in Chrome, not Firefox or Safari. Which is the subject of this article.

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

#334

Post by Spivak »

__david__ wrote: post #282
dessant wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I don't understand this. You're logging in from a fresh browser. Do you want sites to fingerprint you in other ways so you can clear your cookies and not have to deal with captchas?

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

#336

Post by elagost »

reCAPTCHA is malware. If a site uses it, I (usually reluctantly) stop using the site. It's not even a privacy issue anymore - I'm logging into the site, usually so I can give them some money (bandcamp, humble bundle) - I just don't want Google all up in my business. Is that too much to ask these days? In order to not have some creepy giant corporation overseeing everything I do, I guess I just have to not use the Internet.

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

#337

Post by xxxpupugo »

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…

Because it is an adversarial system, the busters are getting better, so reCaptcha needs to catchup.

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

#338

Post by modzu »

judge2020 wrote: post #112
dessant wrote: post #39

I was going through the same ordeal as a Firefox user, so I've made Buster to solve challenges and reclaim some of that lost time: https://github.com/dessant/buster If you're a developer, please consider replacing reCAPTCHA on your site with an alternative. reCAPTCHA discriminates against people with disabilities and those who seek privacy, and it gaslights you into thinking you did not solve the challenge correctly,…

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…

wrong. captcha blocks bots and humans alike. so why bother with the fake puzzle at all? just replace whatever triggers your captcha with a straight up block. or else please consider a responsible alternative.

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

#339

Post by user764743 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #69
ziddoap wrote: post #2

The fire hydrant example... I deal with this every day. It takes soooo looooong to load, it's really ridiculous.

There have literally been times where I debated whether or not I wanted to purchase something because of the knowledge that I would have to solve Google's captcha. Humble Bundle, in particular--the login process for me (due to uBlock+uMatrix installed) is like this: 1) Try to login 2) Login doesn't show up--go to uMatrix and whitelist some crap. 3) Try to login again. 4) First phase of login completes, now blank when…

I tried sending an email on their support page to complain about it as they are likely losing customers like me but it was behind a captchas and I gave up.

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

#340

Post by modzu »

dessant wrote: post #39

I was going through the same ordeal as a Firefox user, so I've made Buster to solve challenges and reclaim some of that lost time: https://github.com/dessant/buster If you're a developer, please consider replacing reCAPTCHA on your site with an alternative. reCAPTCHA discriminates against people with disabilities and those who seek privacy, and it gaslights you into thinking you did not solve the challenge correctly,…

just adding another thank you. it has made the internet accesible to me and other humans again. cheers!
Post reply on HN