4 ms·

Why can't they just allow the user to whitelist recaptcha?

by pinko 8y ago

Spare_account 8y ago
The people who're trying to avoid being fingerprinted are probably thinking of Google when they decided to go down this path. I'm willing to go through extensive captcha cycles if that's the cost of retaining some anonymity. I installed uMatrix a while back to recover some anonymity and it worked at first, my Captcha load spiked significantly which was a great indication that I'd succeeded but it has dropped over time. I guess I'm gradually being fingerprinted again. Google's captcha tests are my litmus paper test that what I'm doing is effective.
- the-pigeon 8y ago
  At this point can I just pay for a certificate or something? Like for $1 give me a certificate that I can use to say "I'm not a spammer" and I can anonymously buy as many certificates as I want. And then if a certificate is used by a spammer it becomes invalid. Seems like it's expensive enough to be worth using for existing spammers but let normal people pay a $1 every year or two to not have to deal with captchas.
  - aussieguy1234 8y ago
    Fingerprinting is designed to generate a unique identifier to track you. Certificates would be an even more accurate unique ID over what fingerprinting could provide
    - hanniabu 8y ago
      > and I can anonymously buy as many certificates as I want
      - acdha 8y ago
        Do you really think that statistically noticeable numbers of people would do that and have perfect opsec preventing those perfect unique identifiers from being linked? I mean, even software developers tend to whine about paying $5 for an app which has far more immediate rewards.
  - ENGNR 8y ago
    Even just proof that 5c worth of crypto or something was burned would would a good alternative. Let the site/app designer work out how often it needs to happen (maybe just the first few times if they're new) to stop spam and not cost honest users much
  - close04 8y ago
    This seems like a very cheap way to make spam look legitimate at least for a while. It now costs me $1 more to spam until I get caught and banned. But until that point I don't have to worry about any kind of filter, I'm a legitimate user.
colemickens 8y ago
It would be more interesting, to me, to see Google support something like CloudFlare's Privacy Pass. https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001992652-Can-I-use-Privacy-Pass-with-Cloudflare- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/11500199265... Though it seems unlikely they would want to? (Though I don't know a lot about and would be interested to hear criticisms of it.)
- jorvi 8y ago
  They would have probably supported it when CAPTCHAs were still about digitizing books. Now that they've turned everyone into unwilling trainers for their visual machine learning they'll never do it.

Why can't they just allow the user to whitelist recaptcha?

by pinko 8y ago

Why can't they just allow the user to whitelist recaptcha?

The people who're trying to avoid being fingerprinted are probably thinking of Google when they decided to go down this path. I'm willing to go through extensive captcha cycles if that's the cost of retaining some anonymity. I installed uMatrix a while back to recover some anonymity and it worked at first, my Captcha load spiked significantly which was a great indication that I'd succeeded but it has dropped over time. I guess I'm gradually being fingerprinted again. Google's captcha tests are my litmus paper test that what I'm doing is effective.

the-pigeon 8y ago
At this point can I just pay for a certificate or something? Like for $1 give me a certificate that I can use to say "I'm not a spammer" and I can anonymously buy as many certificates as I want. And then if a certificate is used by a spammer it becomes invalid. Seems like it's expensive enough to be worth using for existing spammers but let normal people pay a $1 every year or two to not have to deal with captchas.
- aussieguy1234 8y ago
  Fingerprinting is designed to generate a unique identifier to track you. Certificates would be an even more accurate unique ID over what fingerprinting could provide
  - hanniabu 8y ago
    > and I can anonymously buy as many certificates as I want
    - acdha 8y ago
      Do you really think that statistically noticeable numbers of people would do that and have perfect opsec preventing those perfect unique identifiers from being linked? I mean, even software developers tend to whine about paying $5 for an app which has far more immediate rewards.
- ENGNR 8y ago
  Even just proof that 5c worth of crypto or something was burned would would a good alternative. Let the site/app designer work out how often it needs to happen (maybe just the first few times if they're new) to stop spam and not cost honest users much
- close04 8y ago
  This seems like a very cheap way to make spam look legitimate at least for a while. It now costs me $1 more to spam until I get caught and banned. But until that point I don't have to worry about any kind of filter, I'm a legitimate user.

colemickens 8y ago

It would be more interesting, to me, to see Google support something like CloudFlare's Privacy Pass. https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001992652-Can-I-use-Privacy-Pass-with-Cloudflare- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/11500199265... Though it seems unlikely they would want to? (Though I don't know a lot about and would be interested to hear criticisms of it.)

jorvi 8y ago
They would have probably supported it when CAPTCHAs were still about digitizing books. Now that they've turned everyone into unwilling trainers for their visual machine learning they'll never do it.