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

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

#361

Post by drusepth » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #342

reaperducer wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your site isn't worth going to if I have to spend literally minutes "solving" captchas for googles stupid ai which is treating me like prove i'm a bot even when I prove i'm not. I've run into state and local tax agencies, utility companies, and large healthcare companies that require Google's reCAPTCHA. So, unless you don't want healthcare, to have water service at your home, or you're in the mood to just shut down y…

i say the same thing to my friend in a wheelchair -- "suck it up handycapper and pull yourself up the stairs". there was a time not long ago before wheelchair ramps or accessible doors were commonplace. these people were literally shut out of society. its the same with captcha forcing privacy-conscious users off the internet.

Uh, using a wheelchair vs walking is a lot less of a personal choice than using Firefox vs Chrome.

Or: people who need a wheelchair are protected by anti-discriminatory laws, while people who prefer not to use Google products aren't.

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

#362

Post by Johnny555 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

holy_city wrote: post #278

yumraj wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's an option for anything other than 1040-EZ. I get lost filing with turbo tax, I can't even imagine how it'll be on paper.

It's not that hard if your taxes are simple (standard deduction, maybe some capital gains). Keep in mind the filing companies have an incentive to make the process complicated.

I don't think the filing companies are actively making the forms harder to fill out by hand, but the problem is that the IRS has no incentive to minimize the time it takes to file taxes.

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

#363

Post by floatingatoll » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

HN previously, when Google released RCv3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331159

Has anyone posted a technical analysis of the changes? I’d love to read more about it.

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

#364

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

reaperducer wrote: post #319

mitchty wrote: post #316

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. Sure great, but when I see behavior like the above, I just hit back and add the site to my routers firewall black list. If its this much of a PITA to "solve" a captcha, CORRECTLY but I keep getting the middle finger I don't give a crap anymore. Your site isn't worth going to if I have…

Your site isn't worth going to if I have to spend literally minutes "solving" captchas for googles stupid ai which is treating me like prove i'm a bot even when I prove i'm not. I've run into state and local tax agencies, utility companies, and large healthcare companies that require Google's reCAPTCHA. So, unless you don't want healthcare, to have water service at your home, or you're in the mood to just shut down y…

I've even seen state and government sites using Google's reCAPTCHA. People shouldn't be required to hand over their browsing history and other information to Google for essential services, especially to use government websites.

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

#365

Post by goblin89 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

In my experience[0], the captchas are rotated regardless of the browser. The captcha shown each time seems to be chosen based on some sort of hidden “trust level”, which fluctuates across attempts based on your choices.

The starting level, I suspect, is heavily influenced by browser settings and many other factors. With that in mind, and assuming that

1) trust inversely correlates with anonymity,

2) people using Firefox tend to be more tech-savvy and careful about their privacy, and

3) tech-savvy people using Chrome probably won’t bother locking it down, since it “talks to Google anyway”,

I’d be disinclined to believe Google actually discriminates against browsers—no matter how compelling a narrative this may seem—until I have a complete picture of OP’s setup (from browser settings to OS and connection).

[0] Last year there was a period I was getting many captchas (either my location or AWS VPN caused me to be considered “untrusted”); I actively tried to figure out how to get past it without giving the algorithm what it wants, so I could go through a dozen of these captcha screens in one browser window. I use Safari, Firefox and Chrome routinely.

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

#366

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

reaperducer wrote: post #319

mitchty wrote: post #316

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. Sure great, but when I see behavior like the above, I just hit back and add the site to my routers firewall black list. If its this much of a PITA to "solve" a captcha, CORRECTLY but I keep getting the middle finger I don't give a crap anymore. Your site isn't worth going to if I have…

Your site isn't worth going to if I have to spend literally minutes "solving" captchas for googles stupid ai which is treating me like prove i'm a bot even when I prove i'm not. I've run into state and local tax agencies, utility companies, and large healthcare companies that require Google's reCAPTCHA. So, unless you don't want healthcare, to have water service at your home, or you're in the mood to just shut down y…

UK Gov doesn’t allow CAPTCHAs on central gov services: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas

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

#367

Post by joshfraser » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

I absolutely hate CAPTCHAs and have done my best to persuade developers to never use them (1).

But in fairness to Google, the promise of their new Captcha system is that it uses all of your previous browsing history across the web to determine how likely you are to be a bot. You can't do a fair apples to apples comparison unless the browsing history and behavior is the same across both browsers.

1) https://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why-you-should-never...

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

#368

Post by driverdan » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

Based on some CAPTCHA solving sites it costs about $3 per 1000 ReCAPTCHAs solved. That shows you how worthless adding ReCAPTCHA to your site is. All it'll do is slow bots down a bit and cost $0.003.

Here's an extension to use those services in the browser so you never have to solve one again: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recaptcha-sol...

That's assuming you can't get Buster to work.

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

#369

Post by cyphar » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #177

cyphar wrote: post #146

I find it incredible that modern reCAPTCHA exists and is legal. Aside from the the obviously concerning censorship that happens if you try to access reCAPTCHA-locked sites over Tor, it is literally forcing internet users to do free labour for Google so that can train their AI for whatever project they're doing. So not only is it a tax on using the internet (paid in seconds to minutes of human existence each time -- I…

You're barking up the wrong tree here. reCAPTCHA is a free service that developers implement. If you don't like that, complain to them. Companies aren't compelled to use Google services - they have no choice because the bot issue is untenable without it.

Yes it's a free service which developers choose to use (though many sites use it without knowing through CloudFlare), but that doesn't change the fact that Google has decided to use it as a method of getting free labour out of internet users.

reCAPTCHA used to be far more reasonable and ethical when it was being used to digitise books. And when you got reCAPTCHA'd constantly as a Tor user, it wasn't so bad. These days I have to spend several minutes of my life giving training data to Google on every site which uses reCAPTCHA, with nothing in return except for the privilege to be able to access the internet.

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

#370

Post by modzu » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

drusepth wrote: post #361

modzu wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i say the same thing to my friend in a wheelchair -- "suck it up handycapper and pull yourself up the stairs". there was a time not long ago before wheelchair ramps or accessible doors were commonplace. these people were literally shut out of society. its the same with captcha forcing privacy-conscious users off the internet.

Uh, using a wheelchair vs walking is a lot less of a personal choice than using Firefox vs Chrome. Or: people who need a wheelchair are protected by anti-discriminatory laws, while people who prefer not to use Google products aren't.

uh, captchas don't just appear on Google products. Third parties use it -- government services, online shopping, all kinds of things you take for granted because clearly you aren't one of the people affected by it (ie you're fingerprinted). Many things we used to do in physical space now occurs virtually. There is a serious philosophical and moral case to be made for the relevance of privacy and anonymity that captcha is specifically and nefariously working to erode. And in that sense it's worse than bad building codes.