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Someone else already mentioned being hit by Google captchas and the developer of this service said that he switched to DDG as the default search provider. Never

Someone else already mentioned being hit by Google captchas and the developer of this service said that he switched to DDG as the default search provider. Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a single search. Can anyone explain the purpose of Google putting up an apparently impossible barrier like that? Is it because my searches are comingled with dozens of other people attempting Google searches at the same time from the same IP address? Or Google decided to blacklist his IP address?

drewmol 7y ago
>Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a single search. Google probably identified you as computator prior to the capcha but that profile had no value for seemingly impossibly. >Can anyone explain the purpose of Google putting up an apparently impossible barrier like that? Your video will play automatically (after these fourteen short messages from our sponsors)
slowenough 7y ago
Thats really good feedback, thank you for your time on this. Also, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you that you had that experience today. You must feel pretty angry to sit through 15 CAPTCHAs! I have to solve the CAPTCHA problem. I'm sorry I can't explain why this happens or how the CAPTCHA system works. I don't know anything about it. I'm OKAY with the occasional CAPTCHA, but I'm not satisfied that people are getting hit like this. I've been told that VPNs have a solution to this (since they need to deal with their clients getting faced with CAPTCHAs as well) but I'm sorry I have not reached out to any VPNs yet about this because, last time this problem occurred[0], after an hour or two I checked and it stopped happening, and there were no more CAPTCHAs. So last time I did not have to change the default search provider to DDG. I'll send an email to NordVPN now and ask them if they have any idea what I can do. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21375379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21375379
Nextgrid 7y ago
That is a "feature" of ReCAPTCHA, and I believe there might even be a patent on it. The idea is that if you are sure it's a bot and want to deny them access you still waste their resources by making them solve impossible captchas.
- thih9 7y ago
  > if you are sure it’s a bot Looks like it happens not only in that case.
  - rvense 7y ago
    Being sure and being wrong are not mutually exclusive, unfortunately.
- errnoh 7y ago
  As a non-chrome user things have been getting a lot worse lately. I've also noticed more and more pages using recaptcha even there's no clear way for bots to spam content. Are people really that eager to send google all traffic information? Is this really the best solution? Couldn't one for example parse the actual content that the bots are trying to create and filter/ban them based on that? I believe spam detection is quite effective these days. This whole captcha hell is making web really annoying for normal users and mostly just benefits google.
- throwaway58235 7y ago
  It also has the side effect of making the user experience on competing browsers significantly worse.
- dmos62 7y ago
  It also happens if you have extensive anti-fingerprinting measures in place. It doesn't go on forever though. 1 minute of captachas or so.
  - aplacelikethis 7y ago
    Not true. I've spent 5+ minutes trying to get through this captcha system multiple times, never getting through. It really fucks with you when you're on TOR, especially.
superasn 7y ago
Not just for remote browsers, but even any browser other than Google Chrome it triggers a lot of captchas and even renders a lot of sites hosted behind Cloudflare unusable - which is a lot. Just try doing a reverse phone number search on truecaller.com. It will work flawlessly on Chrome but use FF or any other browser and recaptcha will fail you saying you're a bot (at least happens to me evey time I've tried). Same for many other sites where you see that "Checking your browser" page. So even though I want to use FF I can't since most of the web is unusable because of this stupid Recaptcha unlesw you're using Google Chrome :(
- Legogris 7y ago
  I haven't experienced this - I don't suppose you're using uBlock origin or some similar ad/track blocker?
Fnoord 7y ago
Google detected you were not running Google Chrome (with which they can easily profile you) so you end up being punished for that. Which leads to Google Chrome being the preferred product. They made up some punishment system and reason to cover that up. Just kiddin'. Sometimes, I end up having to do unreasonably more captchas. The reason is that the system verified I am human, and it wants me to cooperate with it for free in order to authenticate more captchas. Machine learning, they call it. I call it un(der)paid labour. Never had 15 in a row though, so I suppose the already mentioned reason is more plausible.

drewmol 7y ago

>Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a single search. Google probably identified you as computator prior to the capcha but that profile had no value for seemingly impossibly. >Can anyone explain the purpose of Google putting up an apparently impossible barrier like that? Your video will play automatically (after these fourteen short messages from our sponsors)

slowenough 7y ago

Thats really good feedback, thank you for your time on this. Also, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you that you had that experience today. You must feel pretty angry to sit through 15 CAPTCHAs! I have to solve the CAPTCHA problem. I'm sorry I can't explain why this happens or how the CAPTCHA system works. I don't know anything about it. I'm OKAY with the occasional CAPTCHA, but I'm not satisfied that people are getting hit like this. I've been told that VPNs have a solution to this (since they need to deal with their clients getting faced with CAPTCHAs as well) but I'm sorry I have not reached out to any VPNs yet about this because, last time this problem occurred[0], after an hour or two I checked and it stopped happening, and there were no more CAPTCHAs. So last time I did not have to change the default search provider to DDG. I'll send an email to NordVPN now and ask them if they have any idea what I can do. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21375379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21375379

Nextgrid 7y ago

That is a "feature" of ReCAPTCHA, and I believe there might even be a patent on it. The idea is that if you are sure it's a bot and want to deny them access you still waste their resources by making them solve impossible captchas.

thih9 7y ago
> if you are sure it’s a bot Looks like it happens not only in that case.
- rvense 7y ago
  Being sure and being wrong are not mutually exclusive, unfortunately.
errnoh 7y ago
As a non-chrome user things have been getting a lot worse lately. I've also noticed more and more pages using recaptcha even there's no clear way for bots to spam content. Are people really that eager to send google all traffic information? Is this really the best solution? Couldn't one for example parse the actual content that the bots are trying to create and filter/ban them based on that? I believe spam detection is quite effective these days. This whole captcha hell is making web really annoying for normal users and mostly just benefits google.
throwaway58235 7y ago
It also has the side effect of making the user experience on competing browsers significantly worse.
dmos62 7y ago
It also happens if you have extensive anti-fingerprinting measures in place. It doesn't go on forever though. 1 minute of captachas or so.
- aplacelikethis 7y ago
  Not true. I've spent 5+ minutes trying to get through this captcha system multiple times, never getting through. It really fucks with you when you're on TOR, especially.

superasn 7y ago

Not just for remote browsers, but even any browser other than Google Chrome it triggers a lot of captchas and even renders a lot of sites hosted behind Cloudflare unusable - which is a lot. Just try doing a reverse phone number search on truecaller.com. It will work flawlessly on Chrome but use FF or any other browser and recaptcha will fail you saying you're a bot (at least happens to me evey time I've tried). Same for many other sites where you see that "Checking your browser" page. So even though I want to use FF I can't since most of the web is unusable because of this stupid Recaptcha unlesw you're using Google Chrome :(

Legogris 7y ago
I haven't experienced this - I don't suppose you're using uBlock origin or some similar ad/track blocker?

Fnoord 7y ago

Google detected you were not running Google Chrome (with which they can easily profile you) so you end up being punished for that. Which leads to Google Chrome being the preferred product. They made up some punishment system and reason to cover that up. Just kiddin'. Sometimes, I end up having to do unreasonably more captchas. The reason is that the system verified I am human, and it wants me to cooperate with it for free in order to authenticate more captchas. Machine learning, they call it. I call it un(der)paid labour. Never had 15 in a row though, so I suppose the already mentioned reason is more plausible.