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I got "hellbanned" the other day -- google kept giving me captchas but always marked my answers incorrect. 20 minutes later, I gave up and drove to the library

I got "hellbanned" the other day -- google kept giving me captchas but always marked my answers incorrect. 20 minutes later, I gave up and drove to the library (!). It reset itself the next day, but it really opened my eyes to the power they have slowly obtained over my life.

yesco 8y ago
Why not just use a different search engine? Was the library that much easier in this case?
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Google search wasn't the product being gatekept by google's captcha.
DKWf8EV 8y ago
I don't think you really got hellbanned, Google captchas have just become extremely buggy in recent months. Whenever I have to solve one it always takes me a few tries, sometimes a dozen or more, and I usually triple check whether I've actually selected all the traffic lights/bicycles/chimneys/whatevers before submitting... (Alternative hypothesis: If you solve a captcha correctly, they intentionally give you a few more, to get more good data for their AI algos.)
- nkurz 8y ago
  It's ironic that this comment saying about "hellbanning" was "autodead", and I had to "vouch" to revive it.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I wonder if it hit some automatic filter by virtue of being new, and talking about banning/hellbanning?
- warent 8y ago
  I'm inclined to go with your alternative hypothesis. The quality of the captcha response degrades the more times you solve it consecutively. I was recently developing a web frontend that had a captcha implementation on the login form. The first couple times I solved the captcha there was no problem. Then once it got to fourth and fifth one it started making me solve a few of captcha pages in a row. Eventually it was forcing me to solve several pages of "Select the picture of the fire hydrant" over and over, often marking it as incorrect when it definitely wasn't, and then restarting back from the beginning so each run-through took multiple minutes forcing you to solve dozens of captcha pages before accepting it as correct. So, to add to your hypothesis, they're probably doing this intentionally not only to get more data for their AI algos, but also to mitigate people training bots on CAPTCHAs. EDIT: Also the fact that you're being downvoted is baffling to me but my tinfoil hat persona makes me wonder if it's some orchestrated downvote because you're pointing out a hypothesis that Google is trying to keep hidden.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    It's both. The more consecutive CAPTCHAs you solve in a short period, the more likely Google is to assume you're not a human (or not up to any good), but you definitely can get google browsing identity (however they tag you as a combination of IP, browser fingerprint, etc) to the point that they won't every consider enough responses a good indicator. I've done it many times, and yes, it usually is fixed within a few hours or the next day.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  I agree that a heuristic (machine learning or otherwise) designed to prevent spam was almost certainly the culprit. I disagree with the notion that this does not constitute a hellban, but I'm open to considering alternative nomenclature. The fact stands that google locked me away from my documents and intentionally undermined my ability to understand what had happened or rectify the situation. Collateral damage is still damage.
  - gowld 8y ago
    It may be a ban or an errorban, but it's not a hellban, in any sense of what "hell" means in "hellban:: https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ It also might just be a broken integration with recaptcha.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  I find I can often get away with throwing in a wrong answer or two.
  - corobo 8y ago
    It's probably similar to old recaptcha where they give you a selection of known answers and a couple of unknowns which they're uncertain of. Probably known not-correct answers too so that the system works. If you select the unknowns as well as all of the known answers (and don't select the wrong answers) they can train their AI robots that the extras you selected are also a part of the "has traffic lights" dataset
chewxy 8y ago
oh is that what it was? I've had that many many times in recent days
oarabbus_ 8y ago
They shouldn't have this power
kodablah 8y ago
> 20 minutes later, I gave up and drove to the library (!). Assuming it's traditional Google search from your ISP, there other alternatives such as using startpage.com or Tor.
- enedil 8y ago
  That's assuming you didn't read OC reply to the same comment above.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Tor is even worse (think of everyone else who uses it...)
jlokier 8y ago
I tried making a throwaway account on this site recently. It took about 5 minutes to get past the (Google) captcha. First I clicked that I'm not a robot, but then it gave me the photos of doom. After clicking all the right pictures of a bus, say, then I had to wait while they fade out and fade in new ones rather slowly. There were about 5 rounds of selecting. Then it would pick another noun and ask for that. After a few nouns of a number of rounds each, it cycled back to the first noun. A doubly-nested loop of time-delayed captchas! Thankfully it wasn't important. But it makes me appreciate how someone getting locked out of their own Gmail or Google Docs must feel. Needed to do your job today? Tough luck, better luck tomorrow maybe.
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  Google obviously just decided you were good at training its machine learning algs.
- taftster 8y ago
  I had this happen the other day too. I spent at least 5 minutes each going through 3 different captchas. The slow fade-in / fade-out thing was new and quite annoying. The images were also quite blurry as well. I suspect that if you have a machine that is less likely to be fingerprinted uniquely, you have to solve more captcha. In this case, I happened to be using Firefox on Linux with a few privacy related addons running. If they believe you are a bot, because you're not watching their ads, or because you are running a privacy enhanced environment, I suspect their algorithms will slow you down. It would be interesting to prove this hypothesis. I wonder if you browse with Windows + Chrome + No Ad Blockers, if you get right through the captchas vs. if you use Linux + Firefox + Ad block or maybe even the Tor browser.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- piyush_soni 8y ago
  My hypothesis : Google always shows the captchas now, even when it knows that you're really not a robot because it knows you need its services and you'll probably solve them for free for up to a minute. Related post : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704960 (Ask HN: Do you think Google's recaptcha has gone greedy off late?)
trumped 8y ago
Google's recaptcha became cancer and I really wish companies would stop using it (I think that they are trying to block everyone who still uses a PC). The other day I wasn't even able to create a new reddit account because of it.
redwards510 8y ago
I read this can happen if you are using anti-fingerprinting privacy browser extensions (CanvasBlocker possibly?)
dreamcompiler 8y ago
This is the main reason I use DuckDuckGo now. I was something of a Google power user and they kept sending me on endless captcha safaris. Bye Google.
throwaway2048 8y ago
Yep Recaptcha bans work like that, they don't actually tell you they are never going to let you proceed, they just let waste your time thinking that they will, while profiting off you. Its a perfect example of passive aggressive dysfunctionality when it comes to big tech.
floofy222 8y ago
I just think these captchas are broken in Chrome. Sometimes I use one of these operators by mistake and get instantaneously hellbanned from using google. The first time the captchas kept reappearing a whole day. I read somewhere that the ban is resetted the next day, but the next day I was still getting the captchas and couldn't use google for anything. I deleted all cookies and suddenly I wasn't banned anymore. So this looks to me like a captcha bug, or a chrome bug, or both. Probably both.
beagle3 8y ago
I still browse at the library myself occasionally, but ... ddg? Bing? Startpage? Searx? There are many other search engines as well as other ways to access the google index. Also, a couple of years ago someone posted a search engine he wrote, which was able to index the internet for ~$200/month hosting costs. Sure, it doesn’t do partial or full javascript eval like google, so it doesn’t index the deeper web. But “laser air breakdown” is likely mostly in plain HTML docs.
ask2sk 8y ago
Why not just use DuckDuckGo or other search engines?

yesco 8y ago

Why not just use a different search engine? Was the library that much easier in this case?

jjoonathan 8y ago
Google search wasn't the product being gatekept by google's captcha.

DKWf8EV 8y ago

I don't think you really got hellbanned, Google captchas have just become extremely buggy in recent months. Whenever I have to solve one it always takes me a few tries, sometimes a dozen or more, and I usually triple check whether I've actually selected all the traffic lights/bicycles/chimneys/whatevers before submitting... (Alternative hypothesis: If you solve a captcha correctly, they intentionally give you a few more, to get more good data for their AI algos.)

nkurz 8y ago
It's ironic that this comment saying about "hellbanning" was "autodead", and I had to "vouch" to revive it.
- kbenson 8y ago
  I wonder if it hit some automatic filter by virtue of being new, and talking about banning/hellbanning?
warent 8y ago
I'm inclined to go with your alternative hypothesis. The quality of the captcha response degrades the more times you solve it consecutively. I was recently developing a web frontend that had a captcha implementation on the login form. The first couple times I solved the captcha there was no problem. Then once it got to fourth and fifth one it started making me solve a few of captcha pages in a row. Eventually it was forcing me to solve several pages of "Select the picture of the fire hydrant" over and over, often marking it as incorrect when it definitely wasn't, and then restarting back from the beginning so each run-through took multiple minutes forcing you to solve dozens of captcha pages before accepting it as correct. So, to add to your hypothesis, they're probably doing this intentionally not only to get more data for their AI algos, but also to mitigate people training bots on CAPTCHAs. EDIT: Also the fact that you're being downvoted is baffling to me but my tinfoil hat persona makes me wonder if it's some orchestrated downvote because you're pointing out a hypothesis that Google is trying to keep hidden.
- kbenson 8y ago
  It's both. The more consecutive CAPTCHAs you solve in a short period, the more likely Google is to assume you're not a human (or not up to any good), but you definitely can get google browsing identity (however they tag you as a combination of IP, browser fingerprint, etc) to the point that they won't every consider enough responses a good indicator. I've done it many times, and yes, it usually is fixed within a few hours or the next day.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jjoonathan 8y ago
I agree that a heuristic (machine learning or otherwise) designed to prevent spam was almost certainly the culprit. I disagree with the notion that this does not constitute a hellban, but I'm open to considering alternative nomenclature. The fact stands that google locked me away from my documents and intentionally undermined my ability to understand what had happened or rectify the situation. Collateral damage is still damage.
- gowld 8y ago
  It may be a ban or an errorban, but it's not a hellban, in any sense of what "hell" means in "hellban:: https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ It also might just be a broken integration with recaptcha.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
daveFNbuck 8y ago
I find I can often get away with throwing in a wrong answer or two.
- corobo 8y ago
  It's probably similar to old recaptcha where they give you a selection of known answers and a couple of unknowns which they're uncertain of. Probably known not-correct answers too so that the system works. If you select the unknowns as well as all of the known answers (and don't select the wrong answers) they can train their AI robots that the extras you selected are also a part of the "has traffic lights" dataset

chewxy 8y ago

oh is that what it was? I've had that many many times in recent days

oarabbus_ 8y ago

They shouldn't have this power

kodablah 8y ago

> 20 minutes later, I gave up and drove to the library (!). Assuming it's traditional Google search from your ISP, there other alternatives such as using startpage.com or Tor.

enedil 8y ago
That's assuming you didn't read OC reply to the same comment above.
userbinator 8y ago
Tor is even worse (think of everyone else who uses it...)

jlokier 8y ago

I tried making a throwaway account on this site recently. It took about 5 minutes to get past the (Google) captcha. First I clicked that I'm not a robot, but then it gave me the photos of doom. After clicking all the right pictures of a bus, say, then I had to wait while they fade out and fade in new ones rather slowly. There were about 5 rounds of selecting. Then it would pick another noun and ask for that. After a few nouns of a number of rounds each, it cycled back to the first noun. A doubly-nested loop of time-delayed captchas! Thankfully it wasn't important. But it makes me appreciate how someone getting locked out of their own Gmail or Google Docs must feel. Needed to do your job today? Tough luck, better luck tomorrow maybe.

InitialLastName 8y ago
Google obviously just decided you were good at training its machine learning algs.
taftster 8y ago
I had this happen the other day too. I spent at least 5 minutes each going through 3 different captchas. The slow fade-in / fade-out thing was new and quite annoying. The images were also quite blurry as well. I suspect that if you have a machine that is less likely to be fingerprinted uniquely, you have to solve more captcha. In this case, I happened to be using Firefox on Linux with a few privacy related addons running. If they believe you are a bot, because you're not watching their ads, or because you are running a privacy enhanced environment, I suspect their algorithms will slow you down. It would be interesting to prove this hypothesis. I wonder if you browse with Windows + Chrome + No Ad Blockers, if you get right through the captchas vs. if you use Linux + Firefox + Ad block or maybe even the Tor browser.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
piyush_soni 8y ago
My hypothesis : Google always shows the captchas now, even when it knows that you're really not a robot because it knows you need its services and you'll probably solve them for free for up to a minute. Related post : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704960 (Ask HN: Do you think Google's recaptcha has gone greedy off late?)

trumped 8y ago

Google's recaptcha became cancer and I really wish companies would stop using it (I think that they are trying to block everyone who still uses a PC). The other day I wasn't even able to create a new reddit account because of it.

redwards510 8y ago

I read this can happen if you are using anti-fingerprinting privacy browser extensions (CanvasBlocker possibly?)

dreamcompiler 8y ago

This is the main reason I use DuckDuckGo now. I was something of a Google power user and they kept sending me on endless captcha safaris. Bye Google.

throwaway2048 8y ago

Yep Recaptcha bans work like that, they don't actually tell you they are never going to let you proceed, they just let waste your time thinking that they will, while profiting off you. Its a perfect example of passive aggressive dysfunctionality when it comes to big tech.

floofy222 8y ago

I just think these captchas are broken in Chrome. Sometimes I use one of these operators by mistake and get instantaneously hellbanned from using google. The first time the captchas kept reappearing a whole day. I read somewhere that the ban is resetted the next day, but the next day I was still getting the captchas and couldn't use google for anything. I deleted all cookies and suddenly I wasn't banned anymore. So this looks to me like a captcha bug, or a chrome bug, or both. Probably both.

beagle3 8y ago

I still browse at the library myself occasionally, but ... ddg? Bing? Startpage? Searx? There are many other search engines as well as other ways to access the google index. Also, a couple of years ago someone posted a search engine he wrote, which was able to index the internet for ~$200/month hosting costs. Sure, it doesn’t do partial or full javascript eval like google, so it doesn’t index the deeper web. But “laser air breakdown” is likely mostly in plain HTML docs.

ask2sk 8y ago

Why not just use DuckDuckGo or other search engines?