6 ms·

> recaptcha appears to be moving towards a model based on usage heuristics in v3 I always thought that Google has a huge competitive advantage here, because mo

by krn 8y ago

> recaptcha appears to be moving towards a model based on usage heuristics in v3 I always thought that Google has a huge competitive advantage here, because most people browse the web being logged into their Gmail accounts, and, therefore, as with Google Analytics and Google Adsense, Google knows that it's you who is viewing that page. It can then present extremely time-consuming CAPTCHAs to anonymous visitors, most of whom are likely to be bots or the spammers themselves.

cm2187 8y ago
...or running a logged off browser with cookied restricted to the browser session. I spend my time solving captchas which I am getting sick of. My immediate reaction now when presented a captcha is to browse away.
- ldarby 8y ago
  That is pretty terrible if the web is being split into "google knows who you are and approves of you visiting this website" vs not being tracked by google and being treated as a second class user.
  - rjzzleep 8y ago
    I can relate to what the previous poster said. The worst thing is that this happens even for services I pay for. Some of them even do that for logging in.
  - partisan 8y ago
    Using google with a vpn (PIA) was a non-starter. I usually had to solve 3 or 4 puzzles before I could get to results. Privacy is important to me and it is just as important for them to deny me it.
    - gesman 8y ago
      Well said
    - ac4tw 8y ago
      Interesting--I'm trying Nord right now and while Google has been fine, Amazon blocks me regardless of what I do and I ended up having to add some static routes for Craigslist.
  - joesb 8y ago
    They are not treating you as second class citizen, they are saying they haven't trust you to be human yet. Which is the whole point of capcha. You want Google to not know about you. You want to be a stranger to them. And you are complaining that they don't trust stranger, which you want to be, as much as someone they know?
    - ldarby 8y ago
      If it's about using only Google's services, then yes I agree, but the point is if lots of random sites all decide to use Google for captchas. This has already happened with tor and Cloudflare, but at least that changed for the better recently (see https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-ends-captcha-challenges-for-tor-users/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-ends-captcha-challe...). In that case it was just one CDN using captchas to discriminate against a group of users, so that one change by the CDN could fix the issue. If too many random sites are independently blocking or slowing down anyone not logged into Google, then that'll turn the web into Google's web.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    s/Google/China
- briandear 8y ago
  Thank you Cloudflare for contributing to that nonsense.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  Yeah I'm with you. I like to browse with everything logged out, and I clear all content on browser close. I'm so bloody sick of helping Google train their self driving cars. I swear I'm going to have PTSD about stop signs and store fronts for the rest of my life.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    I've started deliberately getting them wrong - probably won't make a difference, but makes me feel a little better about it (I drew the line when I started getting CAPTCHAs on services I have paid for).
    - ardy42 8y ago
      >> I'm so bloody sick of helping Google train their self driving cars. I swear I'm going to have PTSD about stop signs and store fronts for the rest of my life. > I've started deliberately getting them wrong - probably won't make a difference, but makes me feel a little better about it I don't even have to try anymore to get them wrong on a regular basis. Now, I think it's now more like training Google users to make the same recognition errors as its self-driving cars than training the cars to do a better job.
- dylan604 8y ago
  While I too leave sites that are too annoying to use, as a dev, what are other less annoying ways to slow down bots on one's site?
- mindslight 8y ago
  Ditto here. And some of the worst offenders are retailers! You're trying to get someone to spend real money, and you think it's a good idea to make them screw around with 20 picture puzzles in a row before they're able to do that?! I can only fathom these shops, both management and the webdevs, have no idea how unprofessional their site looks to anyone that isn't using a vanilla ISP connection. And my experience is coming from using a single longstanding VPS address, not even a shared VPN. A sensible scheme would allow a certain rate of login attempts per any IP before hassling a user, but Google is obviously more interested in getting their training data than making sure you don't lose customers!

by krn 8y ago

cm2187 8y ago

...or running a logged off browser with cookied restricted to the browser session. I spend my time solving captchas which I am getting sick of. My immediate reaction now when presented a captcha is to browse away.

ldarby 8y ago
That is pretty terrible if the web is being split into "google knows who you are and approves of you visiting this website" vs not being tracked by google and being treated as a second class user.
- rjzzleep 8y ago
  I can relate to what the previous poster said. The worst thing is that this happens even for services I pay for. Some of them even do that for logging in.
- partisan 8y ago
  Using google with a vpn (PIA) was a non-starter. I usually had to solve 3 or 4 puzzles before I could get to results. Privacy is important to me and it is just as important for them to deny me it.
  - gesman 8y ago
    Well said
  - ac4tw 8y ago
    Interesting--I'm trying Nord right now and while Google has been fine, Amazon blocks me regardless of what I do and I ended up having to add some static routes for Craigslist.
- joesb 8y ago
  They are not treating you as second class citizen, they are saying they haven't trust you to be human yet. Which is the whole point of capcha. You want Google to not know about you. You want to be a stranger to them. And you are complaining that they don't trust stranger, which you want to be, as much as someone they know?
  - ldarby 8y ago
    If it's about using only Google's services, then yes I agree, but the point is if lots of random sites all decide to use Google for captchas. This has already happened with tor and Cloudflare, but at least that changed for the better recently (see https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-ends-captcha-challenges-for-tor-users/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-ends-captcha-challe...). In that case it was just one CDN using captchas to discriminate against a group of users, so that one change by the CDN could fix the issue. If too many random sites are independently blocking or slowing down anyone not logged into Google, then that'll turn the web into Google's web.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  s/Google/China
briandear 8y ago
Thank you Cloudflare for contributing to that nonsense.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
Yeah I'm with you. I like to browse with everything logged out, and I clear all content on browser close. I'm so bloody sick of helping Google train their self driving cars. I swear I'm going to have PTSD about stop signs and store fronts for the rest of my life.
- stordoff 8y ago
  I've started deliberately getting them wrong - probably won't make a difference, but makes me feel a little better about it (I drew the line when I started getting CAPTCHAs on services I have paid for).
  - ardy42 8y ago
    >> I'm so bloody sick of helping Google train their self driving cars. I swear I'm going to have PTSD about stop signs and store fronts for the rest of my life. > I've started deliberately getting them wrong - probably won't make a difference, but makes me feel a little better about it I don't even have to try anymore to get them wrong on a regular basis. Now, I think it's now more like training Google users to make the same recognition errors as its self-driving cars than training the cars to do a better job.
dylan604 8y ago
While I too leave sites that are too annoying to use, as a dev, what are other less annoying ways to slow down bots on one's site?
mindslight 8y ago
Ditto here. And some of the worst offenders are retailers! You're trying to get someone to spend real money, and you think it's a good idea to make them screw around with 20 picture puzzles in a row before they're able to do that?! I can only fathom these shops, both management and the webdevs, have no idea how unprofessional their site looks to anyone that isn't using a vanilla ISP connection. And my experience is coming from using a single longstanding VPS address, not even a shared VPN. A sensible scheme would allow a certain rate of login attempts per any IP before hassling a user, but Google is obviously more interested in getting their training data than making sure you don't lose customers!