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Google ReCAPTCHA

Blue Mountain

Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Blue Mountain
Joined
Jul 2, 2005
Messages
8,615
Location
Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg
Am I the only one on the web that hates Google ReCAPTCHA? You know, "Click all the images that have TRAFFIC LIGHTS"?

I HATE them! I hate the fact they're so damned ambigious. Is a square where there is only a little bit of the flange of the light fixture supposed to be clicked on not? What about the pedestrian cross-walk light? Or the teeny-tiny set of lights three blocks down the road that you can just barely make out?

And then you get another. And another. AND ANOTHER! Sometimes I've had to solve up to eight of them before I get a "pass."

One comment I read on Slashdot, albeit unconfirmed, is if you get too many wrong Google will tell the website "this is a robot" but still continue to give the user challenges. If this is true, then if you get challenge after challenge you don't know if you should continue solving them or if you should just give up, clear everything out, and try again.

Two other things I hate about them. First, Google is using my labour, without compensation, to train their image matching AI. One of the richest companies on the planet and they're making people work for them for free. Secondly, there are other ways web site developers can manage spurious blog comments and robot signups without having to resort to pissing on their visitors.

And don't tell me that I should just not bother visiting the site. All too often I hit these damned things in order to sign up to a site to report bugs in their products, or to get access to services that pretty much only that site offers.

And finally, the sites that are using the ReCAPTCHA simply don't seem to care. Google sure as hell doesn't care about me getting pissed off at then, and any site that I've contacted about their use of it, whether I'm polite about it or impolite, usually simply ignores my complaint.
 
The OP's post made me realize that it has been a long time since I've seen one of these. These days I seem just to be asked to click on a checkable box labeled CAPTCHA. Then I am allowed to proceed. What is going on behind the scenes I have no idea. :confused:
 
My impression is that rather than training its AI, it's a way to log your IP (although they probably have it anyway, I don't know.)

I've found that there are ever only three or four selections required. And my impression is that yours are compared to other responses to get a crowdsourced answer. Kind of like the galaxy-checking app where you identify the way the swirls go, and if most answers agree, that's how they log it.

I don't see recaptchas too often, fortunately, and consider it a minor inconvenience most of the time for a service I want. That is, until they start putting ads in there -- "Click on the four products you like the most!" Then I'm done.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
The OP's post made me realize that it has been a long time since I've seen one of these. These days I seem just to be asked to click on a checkable box labeled CAPTCHA. Then I am allowed to proceed. What is going on behind the scenes I have no idea. :confused:
Click to expand...


What's going on is that Google knows more about you than your mother does and has decided that you are human but harmless.

Blue Mountain likely uses Linux and is less transparent than the bulk of people that show up on these sites, which makes Google nervous. I have literally written an eMail filter that sends the "Someone logged in to your account with a Linux machine. Was that you?" mails from twitter straight to Trash.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
The OP's post made me realize that it has been a long time since I've seen one of these. These days I seem just to be asked to click on a checkable box labeled CAPTCHA. Then I am allowed to proceed. What is going on behind the scenes I have no idea. :confused:
Click to expand...

If you were a computer your mouse would head straight for the box. If you were a human it would go all over the place.

Of course any programmer worth their salt would program the mouse to move in a chaotic pattern. Then it may be hard to tell the difference.
 
Google actually has an app you can download called "Crowd source" that you can contribute to by identifying hand written text, photos and some other stuff, it uses that data for machine learning and other things, such as human learning ;)
 
Obligatory XKCD.
2228
 
Blue Mountain said:
Am I the only one on the web that hates Google ReCAPTCHA? You know, "Click all the images that have TRAFFIC LIGHTS"?
Click to expand...

I only see those at work, for some reason. And yes, they are annoying. I don't know what idiot thought they were a good idea.

Two other things I hate about them. First, Google is using my labour, without compensation, to train their image matching AI. One of the richest companies on the planet and they're making people work for them for free.
Click to expand...

They do it everywhere. Youtube is using you to train their AI to sell you stuff.

We're product, not customers.
 
alfaniner said:
My impression is that rather than training its AI, it's a way to log your IP (although they probably have it anyway, I don't know.)

I've found that there are ever only three or four selections required. And my impression is that yours are compared to other responses to get a crowdsourced answer. Kind of like the galaxy-checking app where you identify the way the swirls go, and if most answers agree, that's how they log it.
Click to expand...
Sometimes I've had to solve as few as three. Other times I've solved eight in a row with no end in sight. Then I have to shut down the browser session, clear everything out, and try again. (I have a "scrap" browser session for this sort of stuff.)

I don't see recaptchas too often, fortunately, and consider it a minor inconvenience most of the time for a service I want. That is, until they start putting ads in there -- "Click on the four products you like the most!" Then I'm done.
Click to expand...
I've never seen that one.

Childlike Empress said:
What's going on is that Google knows more about you than your mother does and has decided that you are human but harmless.
Click to expand...
I think that's a :). Or is it :p?

Blue Mountain likely uses Linux and is less transparent than the bulk of people that show up on these sites, which makes Google nervous. I have literally written an eMail filter that sends the "Someone logged in to your account with a Linux machine. Was that you?" mails from twitter straight to Trash.
Click to expand...
Yes, I use Linux, and have a Pi-hole ad-blocker, and use Ghostery, NoScript, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin in my browser. On top of that my /etc/hosts file blocks quite a few Google hosts and as many Facebook hosts as I could find. (More on that later.)

Mongrel said:
Obligatory XKCD.
Code: 
[qimg]https://xkcd.com/2228/[qimg]
Click to expand...
Errr ... your qimg tag links to an HTML page and not an image file.

Belz... said:
I only see those at work, for some reason. And yes, they are annoying. I don't know what idiot thought they were a good idea.
Click to expand...
In one way they are a good idea, just implemented in one of the most frustrating ways possible.

Now, I solved the "bot" issue on one site myself by using a hidden field on an HTML form. Bots will click on the button and/or fill out the field every time. Humans won't because it doesn't appear on the screen (it's shifted 10,000 pixels to the left using CSS) and is outside of the normal "tabindex" order.

They do it everywhere. Youtube is using you to train their AI to sell you stuff.
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on this thought? Due to all my ad bockers I very rarely see ads on YouTube. Unfortunately YouTube has too much content I'm interested in, so I can't blacklist them. Maybe I should explore Vimeo instead.

We're product, not customers.
Click to expand...
That much I'm aware of. It's one of the things I hate about the modern web.

Dr.Sid said:
Don't blame google, blame sites using recaptcha. Goggle actually isn't using it on their sites, or is it ?
Click to expand...
This. Very much this! These sites are programmed by lazy, incompetent developers. They simply assume the ReCAPTCHA code will load and don't bother checking to ensure it did. After all, who doesn't love Big Brother Google and doesn't use their search, mail, docs and dozens of other products (or the 100 or so they've killed off over the years)?

Very often I fill out a form, click "Submit" and 1) nothing happens or 2) I get a message I didn't complete the CAPTCHA. Then I have to move my hosts file out of the way, load up a browser session that has all my privacy and ad blocking extensions disabled, and try the form again.
 
I never had issue with Recaptcha actually not working. I often have issues reading the signs scrambled to oblivion, or guessing if 1 pixel of possible fire hydrant counts.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Don't blame google, blame sites using recaptcha. Goggle actually isn't using it on their sites, or is it ?
Click to expand...
Yes they do, at the office I'm working at the moment if you use their internal network to access google.com you often get Google saying something is suspicious and asks you to complete a recaptcha.
 
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