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I think it's great. So many sites sit behind Cloudflare now and Cloudflare now uses hCaptcha, which is a big win. And the hCaptchas themselves are easy to compl

by blindm 6y ago

I think it's great. So many sites sit behind Cloudflare now and Cloudflare now uses hCaptcha, which is a big win. And the hCaptchas themselves are easy to complete. No more wondering if you actually clicked on 'all' the traffic lights anymore, yay! I inspected the source code of Google's reCaptcha offering and was disgusted at how many bits of information they were collecting. They also seem to be fingerprinting users so they can't keep registering new accounts on a platform, locking out anonymous users who are usually the best types of users on the platform, as IMHO anonymous voices are (usually) the best voices, or at least the more interesting of voices. Google's reCaptcha code seemed to be very keen on knowing my 'cadence' or the way I used my mouse and how quickly (or how slow) I completed the captcha. It also looked at things like timezone, screen resolution, battery charge level etc So they could determine if it was 'you' who was using the captcha, soon after, in a separate session (even on a different device!)

dheera 6y ago
reCaptcha has also gotten increasingly annoying lately. I forgot my password to one site and tried about 2 or 3 different passwords and in-between each it asked me to do about 7 or 8 of those labelling exercises. I finally just gave up and left the site. Not only that, but the labelling exercises weren't clear. It wanted me to label a "公交車" which means more like a public city bus and there were also school buses which would normally not be called that in Chinese so I didn't label them but Google thought they were part of that class, and wouldn't let me proceed without me labelling them, and furthermore, punished me with more "hard" exercises like that. I guess they are trying to turn me into a stupid bot.
- dsabanin 6y ago
  Recently Google's captcha asked me to mark all the traffic meters on the photos, and amongst the choices was a photo of a mailbox. It didn't let me through until I marked it as a meter as well. Good luck to whatever self driving car they are training using this data.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    What's a traffic meter? Maybe it's just important that the car doesn't drive into it.
    - therein 6y ago
      I think he meant a parking meter.
      - dsabanin 6y ago
        yes, thank you! :facepalm:
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    I would venture that the repeated attempts from multiple users to not mark the mailbox will help with that.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Maybe would be kind of fun if we, the users, could form a coalition to deliberately mislabel photos on captures on a mass scale. It just seems there lacks a way to make it happen beyond the hacker community.
    - DharmaPolice 6y ago
      4chan users already used to do this for the old text based ReCaptcha. The idea was everyone put in a particular racial slur (they're not very imaginative) for the second word. I doubt it had any impact.
      - therein 6y ago
        If I remember correctly, it did have some impact. I believe at one point you could use that racial slur in place of the second word in the captcha and it would accept it.
    - hedora 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gaieges 6y ago
> Google's reCaptcha code seemed to be very keen on knowing my 'cadence' or the way I used my mouse and how quickly (or how slow) I completed the captcha. It also looked at things like timezone, screen resolution, battery charge level etc So they could determine if it was 'you' who was using the captcha, soon after, in a separate session (even on a different device!) I'd bet a good amount that they store that along with all the other personally identifying info they have on you (and google of course has a massive amount of that); which is basically why after a single reCAPTCHA solve, you wont see them prompt you again for ages - they know who you are.
- lumberjack 6y ago
  That's no secret, ... that's exactly how it is supposed to work.
- topynate 6y ago
  Just looked on Takeout and there don't seem to be any reCAPTCHA data there. I wonder what a GDPR request would produce.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    That is an investigative blog post I would like to read too.
  - pests 6y ago
    Someone on here has tried to get all their data from both Facebook and Google. I wish I could find the blog post. The tech companies are claiming their Takeout/equivalent is sufficient under the GDRP and anything extra we ask for is not being provided due to it being "non user understandable" or in a "machine format". IIRC.
    - xncl 6y ago
      That's still their data though, no?
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
samstave 6y ago
NOPE Its a fucking cancer. CANCER. Its a gatekeeper... It is a litmus of those that do not want tracking. FUCK THIS TECH. Period. Its a proxy of bots/terrorists... and if you cant see that, then, fuck you. We do not need this tech. We need anti-bot tech, for sure, but this is the lamest way to accomplish such. FUCK this tech
wintermutestwin 6y ago
I've had hCaptcha recheck me repeatedly and fail to work at all on VPN. I much prefer ebay's simple slide the puzzle piece method.
- ldjb 6y ago
  That's annoying. Have you tried using their accessibility feature? https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility
  - gsich 6y ago
    Anti-feature as you need to sign up for this.
- dylz 6y ago
  The slide is just as, if not more invasive as recaptcha in terms of privacy, cross-site tracking and fingerprinting.
- boneitis 6y ago
  Yes. hCaptcha is not easy as is being claimed here. I have lost a lot of time and been blocked from much content due to hCaptcha.
fnord77 6y ago
Is there a way to delete collected reCaptcha data from google accounts? I looked around and I don't see a specific setting for that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
modzu 6y ago
well the slight improvement in usability is a win, but is it really any more anonymous than recaptcha?
- fab1an 6y ago
  Unlike Google, which is making hundreds of billions with ads, we have zero reasons to track users - customers pay us to stop bots, and that's the product we provide.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - modzu 6y ago
    one significant issue with recaptcha is that it punishes users who are not easily identifiable. the puzzle isn't enough for recaptcha - it needs to know who you are. is hcaptcha better in this regard? for example does it work behind tor? does it work with third party cookies disabled? is the challenge im ostensibly solving really the only thing required to verify my humanity? if so, i'm impressed! but if not, maybe we should just do away with the puzzles...
frakkingcylons 6y ago
I’m not particularly fond of reCaptcha either but I disagree that it’s an obviously good thing for someone to be able to repeatedly make new accounts with no restrictions. Abusive users use this to bypass account bans.
ornornor 6y ago
I love this extension: https://github.com/dessant/buster https://github.com/dessant/buster It won’t solve the privacy issues but at least you’re not working on google’s training set anymore and captchas are automatically solved for you.
raspyberr 6y ago
Lots of websites sit behind a single company which has now changed to use its own captach is a good thing?
- landerwust 6y ago
  It's not ideal but it is an improvement.
- hedora 6y ago
  Creating a monoculture makes it easier to implement systems that automatically bypass the captchas, so it’s good for end users, especially people that are visually impaired, or otherwise unable to solve captchas.
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
And you are also contributing, without pay, to G$$gle AI and their plans of world domination.
- lowlevellimbo 6y ago
  Using hCaptcha is also contributing to some ML model for different companies serving unknown (to us) purposes.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
As a nojs browser, I only think it's great in the sense that I don't have to waste my time with sites which don't care about accessibility.
- deepstack 6y ago
  yes we need captcha that supports browsers like links. NOJS browser ought to make a comeback. display image, text and video. For many sites that's ALL we need. For sure enable javascript to get the fancy stuff, but mostly we just want to read the text, view the picture and see the video.

by blindm 6y ago

dheera 6y ago

reCaptcha has also gotten increasingly annoying lately. I forgot my password to one site and tried about 2 or 3 different passwords and in-between each it asked me to do about 7 or 8 of those labelling exercises. I finally just gave up and left the site. Not only that, but the labelling exercises weren't clear. It wanted me to label a "公交車" which means more like a public city bus and there were also school buses which would normally not be called that in Chinese so I didn't label them but Google thought they were part of that class, and wouldn't let me proceed without me labelling them, and furthermore, punished me with more "hard" exercises like that. I guess they are trying to turn me into a stupid bot.

dsabanin 6y ago
Recently Google's captcha asked me to mark all the traffic meters on the photos, and amongst the choices was a photo of a mailbox. It didn't let me through until I marked it as a meter as well. Good luck to whatever self driving car they are training using this data.
- dmurray 6y ago
  What's a traffic meter? Maybe it's just important that the car doesn't drive into it.
  - therein 6y ago
    I think he meant a parking meter.
    - dsabanin 6y ago
      yes, thank you! :facepalm:
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I would venture that the repeated attempts from multiple users to not mark the mailbox will help with that.
- dheera 6y ago
  Maybe would be kind of fun if we, the users, could form a coalition to deliberately mislabel photos on captures on a mass scale. It just seems there lacks a way to make it happen beyond the hacker community.
  - DharmaPolice 6y ago
    4chan users already used to do this for the old text based ReCaptcha. The idea was everyone put in a particular racial slur (they're not very imaginative) for the second word. I doubt it had any impact.
    - therein 6y ago
      If I remember correctly, it did have some impact. I believe at one point you could use that racial slur in place of the second word in the captcha and it would accept it.
  - hedora 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gaieges 6y ago

> Google's reCaptcha code seemed to be very keen on knowing my 'cadence' or the way I used my mouse and how quickly (or how slow) I completed the captcha. It also looked at things like timezone, screen resolution, battery charge level etc So they could determine if it was 'you' who was using the captcha, soon after, in a separate session (even on a different device!) I'd bet a good amount that they store that along with all the other personally identifying info they have on you (and google of course has a massive amount of that); which is basically why after a single reCAPTCHA solve, you wont see them prompt you again for ages - they know who you are.

lumberjack 6y ago
That's no secret, ... that's exactly how it is supposed to work.
topynate 6y ago
Just looked on Takeout and there don't seem to be any reCAPTCHA data there. I wonder what a GDPR request would produce.
- edoceo 6y ago
  That is an investigative blog post I would like to read too.
- pests 6y ago
  Someone on here has tried to get all their data from both Facebook and Google. I wish I could find the blog post. The tech companies are claiming their Takeout/equivalent is sufficient under the GDRP and anything extra we ask for is not being provided due to it being "non user understandable" or in a "machine format". IIRC.
  - xncl 6y ago
    That's still their data though, no?
- dodobirdlord 6y ago

samstave 6y ago

NOPE Its a fucking cancer. CANCER. Its a gatekeeper... It is a litmus of those that do not want tracking. FUCK THIS TECH. Period. Its a proxy of bots/terrorists... and if you cant see that, then, fuck you. We do not need this tech. We need anti-bot tech, for sure, but this is the lamest way to accomplish such. FUCK this tech

wintermutestwin 6y ago

I've had hCaptcha recheck me repeatedly and fail to work at all on VPN. I much prefer ebay's simple slide the puzzle piece method.

ldjb 6y ago
That's annoying. Have you tried using their accessibility feature? https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility
- gsich 6y ago
  Anti-feature as you need to sign up for this.
dylz 6y ago
The slide is just as, if not more invasive as recaptcha in terms of privacy, cross-site tracking and fingerprinting.
boneitis 6y ago
Yes. hCaptcha is not easy as is being claimed here. I have lost a lot of time and been blocked from much content due to hCaptcha.

fnord77 6y ago

Is there a way to delete collected reCaptcha data from google accounts? I looked around and I don't see a specific setting for that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

modzu 6y ago

well the slight improvement in usability is a win, but is it really any more anonymous than recaptcha?

fab1an 6y ago
Unlike Google, which is making hundreds of billions with ads, we have zero reasons to track users - customers pay us to stop bots, and that's the product we provide.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- modzu 6y ago
  one significant issue with recaptcha is that it punishes users who are not easily identifiable. the puzzle isn't enough for recaptcha - it needs to know who you are. is hcaptcha better in this regard? for example does it work behind tor? does it work with third party cookies disabled? is the challenge im ostensibly solving really the only thing required to verify my humanity? if so, i'm impressed! but if not, maybe we should just do away with the puzzles...

frakkingcylons 6y ago

I’m not particularly fond of reCaptcha either but I disagree that it’s an obviously good thing for someone to be able to repeatedly make new accounts with no restrictions. Abusive users use this to bypass account bans.

ornornor 6y ago

I love this extension: https://github.com/dessant/buster https://github.com/dessant/buster It won’t solve the privacy issues but at least you’re not working on google’s training set anymore and captchas are automatically solved for you.

raspyberr 6y ago

Lots of websites sit behind a single company which has now changed to use its own captach is a good thing?

landerwust 6y ago
It's not ideal but it is an improvement.
hedora 6y ago
Creating a monoculture makes it easier to implement systems that automatically bypass the captchas, so it’s good for end users, especially people that are visually impaired, or otherwise unable to solve captchas.

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

And you are also contributing, without pay, to G$$gle AI and their plans of world domination.

lowlevellimbo 6y ago
Using hCaptcha is also contributing to some ML model for different companies serving unknown (to us) purposes.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

As a nojs browser, I only think it's great in the sense that I don't have to waste my time with sites which don't care about accessibility.

deepstack 6y ago
yes we need captcha that supports browsers like links. NOJS browser ought to make a comeback. display image, text and video. For many sites that's ALL we need. For sure enable javascript to get the fancy stuff, but mostly we just want to read the text, view the picture and see the video.