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

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

#91

Post by jchw »

account42 wrote: post #89
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…

A start would be what kinds of websites even need a CAPTCHA in the first place. Why does just viewing websites with static conent ever need to result in a captcha prompt.

That I think is just to try to prevent scraping, probably mostly from people training AI models. I don't really think anti-scraping mitigations are a good idea and I'm hoping that problem some day solves itself.

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

#92

Post by blindgeek »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #57
rvnx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the future I think we will again go to "notarization"/"attestation" of the operating system / hardware. Essentially, the manufacturer of the device + operating system will generate a unique signature per each device, and web browsers will be able to access it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

I'm very grateful the WEI proposals were put down. It'd have an enormous privacy impact on normal users, and not give that much protection against bad actors using device farms & similar tools.

But the WEI proposals were never about protecting from bad actors with device farms. They were always about guaranteeing that a certain ad company who also makes browsers can always push ads to users, thus maximizing value for shareholders. Protecting from device farms was just the bait.

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

#93

Post by mapt »

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…

There is another option.

CAPTCHA is useful only when it is costly to solve. It is a costly signal that this is a real person, or at least is more than 1/10^9th of a real person (you're not running a fully automated spam system).

The postal service also has costs - everybody that wants to move something through the postal service needs to buy a stamp. Transport fees are a 'natural' way to moderate traffic and deter spam.

Various combinations of network architecture and cryptocoinage permit you to invoke transport fees per attempted transmission/login. Sensible ones, if every spam email or login guess costs even 1 penny it becomes prohibitive for most fully automated spam applications. The cryptocoin aspect is specifically about preserving anonymity of private wallet access while permitting the cash-like transactions that stamps enable.

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

#94

Post by blindgeek »

isodev wrote: post #69
slightwinder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are captchas even a thing still? Because it works, to some degree. It keeps away the annoying cheap bots and stupid kids. Smarter or more dedicated actors can still circumvent it, but even they are least slowed down to some degree. But thinking about, maybe just putting a 20 second pause after which you have to push a button might be already good enough for all this. And every stupid bot avoiding it will get ba…

Indeed… and if it's really problematic, a client-side script can run some expensive calculations as well (the same way captchas do it), to make it extra uninteresting to target unless someone is really motivated and has the budget for it.

Yes, hashcash.

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

#95

Post by graemep »

hifromwork wrote: post #37
isodev wrote: post #21

Why are captchas even a thing still? If folks want to scrape something or build an automation around something, then why not let them do it? They still have to respect the system they're logging in. Not to mention the privacy perk of not exposing your visitors to some captcha service with a dozen or more data subprocessors.

I assume you never tried to add a contact form to your website. Explanation: I did, and within a few days bots started sending me spam using that form. I just added a trivial captcha (hardcoded '2+3=' question), but if my scale was bigger that would be untenable. Think also of PM spam, autoregistering accounts to abuse free tiers, etc.

There are less annoying alternatives. Things like honeypot fields are worked for me so far. There are more dynamic variations on your maths question.

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

#96

Post by dataflow »

Telemakhos wrote: post #73
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…

This doesn’t feel so much like the end of the “open web” as it does a rehash of USENET and email spam issues. Social media killed USENET, and email managed its spam issues thanks to filtering.

Email hasn't actually fixed spam issues, it's just mitigated a big chunk of them. But I know for a fact that I still mark emails in my inbox as spam on a regular basis, and still dig legitimate emails out of my spam once in a while.

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

#97

Post by rovr138 »

jillyboel wrote: post #76
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 live in "the West" but English isn't my main language. I have no idea what a conoid is.

> A conoid is a ruled surface whose rulings are parallel to a plane (called the directrix plane) and intersect a fixed line (called the axis of the conoid) (Gellert et al. 1989, p. 202). Examples include the circular conoid, helicoid, hyperbolic paraboloid, parabolic conoid, Plücker conoid, right circular conoid, Wallis's conical edge, Whitney umbrella, and Zindler conoid. If the axis is perpendicular to the directrix plane, the conoid is called a right conoid (Gray et al. 2006, p. 436).

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Conoid.html

so, a surface with stripes - example https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1366651

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

#98

Post by smitelli »

ta1243 wrote: post #22
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

Sorry I live in the west, what's a "crosswalk" Did you mean to say > not everyone lives in the USA Other things I don't have a clue about - a fire hydrant, yellow taxis, yellow buses (Obviously I do, because of American cultural imperialism through things like Captchas which mean the world has to understand American cultural touchstones)

I distinctly remember a captcha which asked me to identify fire hydrants. Some of the pictures were hydrants, while others were standpipes. These are different things, and I answered accordingly.

The service refused to acknowledge my humanity until I relented that a standpipe was a hydrant. If at some future date any of us burn to death due to an automated fire truck that misbehaved due to this, we’ll know why.

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

#99

Post by rovr138 »

croes wrote: post #45
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

But on the internet the answer to „what is a conoid“ is just a web search away. The bigger problem is when other options of a captcha fit in another cultural context. Taxi colors are an example for that.

> A conoid is a ruled surface whose rulings are parallel to a plane (called the directrix plane) and intersect a fixed line (called the axis of the conoid) (Gellert et al. 1989, p. 202). Examples include the circular conoid, helicoid, hyperbolic paraboloid, parabolic conoid, Plücker conoid, right circular conoid, Wallis's conical edge, Whitney umbrella, and Zindler conoid. If the axis is perpendicular to the directrix plane, the conoid is called a right conoid (Gray et al. 2006, p. 436).

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Conoid.html

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

#100

Post by blindgeek »

Lerc wrote: post #38
blindgeek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that's a good point, and it hadn't occurred to me. For the overwhelming majority of blind people, language like "looked at" is just metaphorical. I mean, all language is symbolic anyway. The map is not the territory and the menu is not the dinner. Some of us are taught very young to use common terms like look in that kind of a metaphorical way. Partially so that we fit in and are comfortable with the rest o…

This is how use of language concealed aphantasia for so long. When you use a word in a context similar to how another used it in that context there seems to be a presumption that the subjective experience is the same in that context. Given how we learn languages and words based upon encountering them in contexts, it makes sense that terms that we use in outwardly similar contexts reflect the subjective experience tha…

Here's the thing. We're talking about people who are the accessibility team for hCaptcha. They should at least have a figleaf of an understanding of life for blind people.

The other problem we have is that online companies tend to be accountable to no one. Short of law suits, my friend who got banned from hCaptcha for "not being blind" has no recourse, because nobody is accountable.

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