5 ms·

the tone of this article is awful. it also has the history of recaptcha wrong. I can't imagine it actually taking 30 seconds to solve a reCAPTCHA. That needs a

the tone of this article is awful. it also has the history of recaptcha wrong. I can't imagine it actually taking 30 seconds to solve a reCAPTCHA. That needs a citation.

michaelt 7y ago
In Firefox, log out of your google account, block cookies and enable the anti-fingerprinting features. Or just browse with Tor Browser. You will start getting challenged more often, you'll find you're asked to solve several multi-select challenges in a row even if you get them right, the multi-select challenges will replace tiles after you select them, and the tiles will start fading in and out very slowly. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5KSZSpDFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5KSZSpDFY for an example video. These are (AFAIK) intentional features deployed Google - you just don't see them if they can already track you via something like your Google account.
- brokensegue 7y ago
  Ok I did as you suggested and then went to https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo Took me all of 5 seconds to solve
  - mindslight 7y ago
    The most insidious thing about this two-tiered surveillance society is that its effects are invisible to people in the "good" class, and they insist on remaining ignorant of what happens if you're not in that class. Google still has plenty of other tracking points on you. And of course reCAPTCHA looks reasonable to a prospective developer - it wouldn't be adopted otherwise! If someone tells you it routinely takes 30 seconds to solve, you should really just accept their experience rather than discarding it with "works fine for me!". If you still need to see it with your own eyes, go setup a TOR browser and become one of the undesirables, rather than just imagining. You just might end up adopting the marginalized view.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Try using Tor and a real website that is using reCAPTCHA (I don't think they have their actual scoring system enabled on the demo). GP posted a link to a video of someone solving a single reCAPTCHA prompt for 2.5 minutes. I also regularly have to solve several CAPTCHAs in a row, often with increasing levels of image distortion. Before being so brazenly dismissive of other people's experiences, take the few measly minutes it would take to actually try it out. Even doing a simple Google search with Tor Browser usually gives you a reCAPTCHA to solve.
    - brokensegue 7y ago
      > being so brazenly dismissive of other people's experiences, take the few measly minutes it would take to actually try it out ?? I did try it exactly as was requested of me. I didn't know where to find a recaptcha so I went to the demo page. It's possible the video is the result of a bug and not normal behaviour. I wouldn't know as I don't often browse with tor.
      - jraph 7y ago
        I've experienced that in the past, without using tor, but using Firefox. I go to great lengths to block anything Google. Google Fonts, Google CDNs (and I now use Decentraleyes so CDNs are mostly not even reached). I have to explicitly unblock reCAPTCHA scripts for it to even work - or use a clean and disposable browser profile. I've occasionally seen the behavior on the video when I really need to access the page (though usually I just complain to the webmaster). I once had to request a new password for my online bank account. I ended up asking the bank manager to reset my password, pretending that reCAPTCHA is preventing me from resetting the password myself. My bank is not paying me for solving captchas for Google's benefit (this is so screwed up…). The biggest offender is CloudFlare for me.
      - cyphar 7y ago
        > I didn't know where to find a recaptcha so I went to the demo page. Well, now you do (though I was a bit of an asshat in my parent comment, sorry about that): > Even doing a simple Google search with Tor Browser usually gives you a reCAPTCHA to solve. You can get the Tor Browser from [1]. [1]: https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
- mattlondon 7y ago
  I have noticed recently that when using Firefox the need to repeatedly spot traffic lights or fire hydrants 5 or 6 times in a row seems to have gone away. It now seems that I only need to do it once now so perhaps someone at Google fixed the glitch?
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  It sounds like you intentionally are making it very hard to distinguish if you are a bot or a human?
  - michaelt 7y ago
    No, I'm intending to make it hard for sketchy third-party ad companies to track me. Some ad networks can't even avoid serving malware, it's not realistic to expect them to competently safeguard my data. It just so happens that Google's method for telling if I'm a bot or a human isn't just to show me mangled text, but also to use ad-network-style tracking. In Google's defence this is probably an attempt to deal with captcha-solving-by-humans-as-a-service or something like that. I can't imagine Google employs many privacy enthusiasts who would spot a problem like this by dogfooding.
magashna 7y ago
Forget your password a few times on a site that uses it (logMeIn and its products). You'll get an endless stream of challenges. I usually just give up and try again later
OrgNet 7y ago
> I can't imagine it actually taking 30 seconds to solve a reCAPTCHA. It happens to me quite frequently... but I block a lot of tracking. Sometime I give up if I was browsing just for fun... but my bank sometime use reCAPTCHA.
mattlondon 7y ago
They have been putting some users through multiple challenges with a forced delay/throttling - so you need to actually answer 4 or 5 challenges with a minimum time per challenge of perhaps 5-8 seconds etc. These users appear to be Firefox users who sandbox Google cookies. That said, it seems to have improved a lot recently (only one challenge)
neop1x 7y ago
In the past, I often spent more than 30 seconds on each recaptcha. It really is a problem. That improved by allowing google cookies but now every webpage with recaptcha I visit is being tracked by Google. :(

the tone of this article is awful. it also has the history of recaptcha wrong. I can't imagine it actually taking 30 seconds to solve a reCAPTCHA. That needs a citation.

michaelt 7y ago

In Firefox, log out of your google account, block cookies and enable the anti-fingerprinting features. Or just browse with Tor Browser. You will start getting challenged more often, you'll find you're asked to solve several multi-select challenges in a row even if you get them right, the multi-select challenges will replace tiles after you select them, and the tiles will start fading in and out very slowly. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5KSZSpDFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5KSZSpDFY for an example video. These are (AFAIK) intentional features deployed Google - you just don't see them if they can already track you via something like your Google account.

brokensegue 7y ago
Ok I did as you suggested and then went to https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo Took me all of 5 seconds to solve
- mindslight 7y ago
  The most insidious thing about this two-tiered surveillance society is that its effects are invisible to people in the "good" class, and they insist on remaining ignorant of what happens if you're not in that class. Google still has plenty of other tracking points on you. And of course reCAPTCHA looks reasonable to a prospective developer - it wouldn't be adopted otherwise! If someone tells you it routinely takes 30 seconds to solve, you should really just accept their experience rather than discarding it with "works fine for me!". If you still need to see it with your own eyes, go setup a TOR browser and become one of the undesirables, rather than just imagining. You just might end up adopting the marginalized view.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Try using Tor and a real website that is using reCAPTCHA (I don't think they have their actual scoring system enabled on the demo). GP posted a link to a video of someone solving a single reCAPTCHA prompt for 2.5 minutes. I also regularly have to solve several CAPTCHAs in a row, often with increasing levels of image distortion. Before being so brazenly dismissive of other people's experiences, take the few measly minutes it would take to actually try it out. Even doing a simple Google search with Tor Browser usually gives you a reCAPTCHA to solve.
  - brokensegue 7y ago
    > being so brazenly dismissive of other people's experiences, take the few measly minutes it would take to actually try it out ?? I did try it exactly as was requested of me. I didn't know where to find a recaptcha so I went to the demo page. It's possible the video is the result of a bug and not normal behaviour. I wouldn't know as I don't often browse with tor.
    - jraph 7y ago
      I've experienced that in the past, without using tor, but using Firefox. I go to great lengths to block anything Google. Google Fonts, Google CDNs (and I now use Decentraleyes so CDNs are mostly not even reached). I have to explicitly unblock reCAPTCHA scripts for it to even work - or use a clean and disposable browser profile. I've occasionally seen the behavior on the video when I really need to access the page (though usually I just complain to the webmaster). I once had to request a new password for my online bank account. I ended up asking the bank manager to reset my password, pretending that reCAPTCHA is preventing me from resetting the password myself. My bank is not paying me for solving captchas for Google's benefit (this is so screwed up…). The biggest offender is CloudFlare for me.
    - cyphar 7y ago
      > I didn't know where to find a recaptcha so I went to the demo page. Well, now you do (though I was a bit of an asshat in my parent comment, sorry about that): > Even doing a simple Google search with Tor Browser usually gives you a reCAPTCHA to solve. You can get the Tor Browser from [1]. [1]: https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
mattlondon 7y ago
I have noticed recently that when using Firefox the need to repeatedly spot traffic lights or fire hydrants 5 or 6 times in a row seems to have gone away. It now seems that I only need to do it once now so perhaps someone at Google fixed the glitch?
privateSFacct 7y ago
It sounds like you intentionally are making it very hard to distinguish if you are a bot or a human?
- michaelt 7y ago
  No, I'm intending to make it hard for sketchy third-party ad companies to track me. Some ad networks can't even avoid serving malware, it's not realistic to expect them to competently safeguard my data. It just so happens that Google's method for telling if I'm a bot or a human isn't just to show me mangled text, but also to use ad-network-style tracking. In Google's defence this is probably an attempt to deal with captcha-solving-by-humans-as-a-service or something like that. I can't imagine Google employs many privacy enthusiasts who would spot a problem like this by dogfooding.

magashna 7y ago

Forget your password a few times on a site that uses it (logMeIn and its products). You'll get an endless stream of challenges. I usually just give up and try again later

OrgNet 7y ago

> I can't imagine it actually taking 30 seconds to solve a reCAPTCHA. It happens to me quite frequently... but I block a lot of tracking. Sometime I give up if I was browsing just for fun... but my bank sometime use reCAPTCHA.

mattlondon 7y ago

They have been putting some users through multiple challenges with a forced delay/throttling - so you need to actually answer 4 or 5 challenges with a minimum time per challenge of perhaps 5-8 seconds etc. These users appear to be Firefox users who sandbox Google cookies. That said, it seems to have improved a lot recently (only one challenge)

neop1x 7y ago

In the past, I often spent more than 30 seconds on each recaptcha. It really is a problem. That improved by allowing google cookies but now every webpage with recaptcha I visit is being tracked by Google. :(