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Ask HN: Do you have problems solving Google reCAPTCHA?

4 points by iperi 8y ago

About once a month I must login to a website where login form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA mechanism. I did not care much about this, because it took about 20-30 seconds to solve. Acceptable for me. And of course it added some protection against bots. But last month it started driving me crazy. Now I have 10+ tries until it accepts me as a human. I'm clicking images for about 5-10 minutes just to login to a website! I'm clicking all roads, all road signs, all cars and still failing the test. I live in Europe and the funniest thing is after 2-3 failed attempts I'm starting to get images from more exotic places like China. I have very big problems problem with distinguishing between road signs and ads in China because I don't know how road signs look there and what is written. So failed combo just continues... As a web developer I really like this mechanism, but as a user it became the wall hard to get through (at least for me). I'm wondering is just me? Maybe someone else have similar problem with solving reCAPTCHA?

mikro2nd 8y ago
Often, if confronted by captcha/reCaptcha, I will simply bounce. I'm tired of the degrading experience of being used -- for no compensation -- as a human robot to train Google's image recog. algorithms. Even worse is when it gets used by a site that /already knows I'm a human/ -- because I've had to jump through KYC hoops or for similar reasons. It's reached the point where such abuse of my time by a site is strong cause for moving to a competitor (and there's /always/ a competitor!) "As a Web Developer" please, PLEASE reconsider using Google's Invasion of Humanity Device.
- iperi 8y ago
  Do you know any alternatives?
romellem 8y ago
Yes, I'd say 1 out of 3 times I fail the first test, and have to solve another identification task. I have to do these quick often because of the VPN service I use, which triggers Google searches to use their anti-DDOS measures. The puzzles where there is a single image divided into cells, often I find myself not sure if a cell should be selected or not. They may ask "select cells with street signs" and there will be a cell with a small corner of the sign shown. Should I select that? Technically it _does_ show a part of the sign, but I honestly don't know if clicking those leads to successes or failures. Additionally, ones that show multiple images and you need to select all images that contain some object, I struggle with ones where there _might_ be a sliver of a car, or storefront, or street, within the view. Should those be selected? They obviously aren't the subject of the photo, but again, technically they are a part of the image. Again, I don't know what Google is looking for with these questions.
- iperi 8y ago
  Once I was watching my dad solving puzzle. He got road sign that was hidden in 95% behind leaves of tree. We discussed for a minute should we select this or not. He selected. It was accepted. Puzzle solved. Then I thought it's ridiculous. Maybe someday someone writes a book „How to solve reCAPTCHA? Guide for beginners”.